Happy No Cussing Week

Well, it's almost official here in California (the bill has to pass the state senate), but the first week of March is slated to be No Cussing Week.

You know who is excited by a No Swearing week? My daughter. She says the common penalty is giving a dollar to the person who witnesses your swearing.

We've discussed swearing before. To a degree they're just words, and one can certainly be cruel, insulting, or crass without using swear words. But some words are simply rude to people and swear words are an easy no-brainer for kids. I've told her that swear words coming from a child is very rude-sounding, much more jarring than from an adult. Maybe the lack of life experience to warrant certain words or expressions? For example, to hear an adult say "I'm going to kill this dog if he chews my shoes again", one assumes sarcasm and exaggerated frustration. If a 6 year old says the same thing, alarm bells go off and concern is expressed--"you know that would be awful and wrong, to kill Biscuit?" Anyhoo, the girl gets it.

So of course, I had to ask her if she thought I swore a lot. She thought about it and said, Well, you don't swear all the time. But you don't swear a little. She sighed. You're moderate. You know, in-between. Maybe closer to "a little."

So I asked her when I swear. She rolled her eyes--when you watch those football games and they do something wrong, you swear at them and scream "WHY did you do that?!" Or when the animals knock something down. Or when you do something, like break a dish on accident.

I decided against clarifying that when I swear at football games, it usually also includes the words, come on! People have money on this game! But I did tell her I'm up for the challenge. She adds that this includes when you write swear words too. Like when you write F, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk.

Got it. Here we go.