... down a hole.

It was an uneasy moment, hearing my four-year-old nephew spontaneously declare "mother fucker" at a bustling Sunday Brunch spot.  And more uneasy were those few seconds of silence it took the surrounding adults, including the child's parents, to process their reactions.  But then the verdict was unanimously delivered. 

Apparently, hearing a white, otherwise normal and arguably well raised baby throw up artless profanity is at least as awkwardly amusing--to young, white, American adults-- as Robert Downey Jr. in black face. 

Now, I'm no prude by any stretch of a similarly warped imagination, but this experience, I dare say, profoundly adjusted my sentiment toward 'fucking.'

I suspect the willingness to regard a child's verbal indiscretions with open amusement and merely a dash of shy disapproval--which a child most certainly interprets as, "do it again, you funny, little bastard; not right at this moment, but definitely again"--is due to that same child’s ability to conjure the most dah-ling of linguistic sensationalism in equally adorable measures, thereby neutralizing any hardcore raps they may spit. 

Because, when that same nephew saw my lady giggling at his 'fucking' comment, he immediately followed it with this:  A pouty gaze into her eager, almond-shaped eyes, bearing a hint of Casanova with precocious pitch as he purrs the tender coo, "I super like you," to which the woman immediately swoons with all the motor control of the front row at a Jonas Brothers concert. 

So, WTF, exactly, is my problem?  Well, if it isn’t bad enough that those of us whom pride ourselves on articulation and the rendering of game are effortlessly upstaged on a regular basis by rug-munching shit-spitters, it is definitely bad enough that we young "adults” are increasingly reliant on profanity and filler to patch the holes in our verbal inabilities as we amusedly allow mere babies to placate the indignity of such inadequacies with the highest form of flattery, mimicry.

Put simply,  'fucking,' should be the right and property of those whom understand and honor both its glorious tradition as well as its magnificent potential as an expletive of unrivaled superiority.  And even they should use it sparingly, brilliantly.  It must not, however, continue its monumental decline into ubiquitous sentence fodder like like like, pour example. 

OK, I sound like a pedantic ass.  What's new?

Nevertheless, I'm determined to curtail my use of profanity to the "bare necessities," the simple, naked necessities.  I figure this will take some positive conditioning, so.  Every time I fuck a sentence, I'll punish myself with a glass of red wine, Bordeaux, and taste contempt for English as only the French can articulate.  Now, fuck off!  Gulp, gulp, and gulp... bad boy.
                                                                      -JPF