“Can we have a smidge fewer goddamns?” my friend asked me on a trip to London. While I agreed to say fewer GDs for that trip with her, that was more years ago than I want to count, and I still pop out a few GDs a day.
It’s not that I’m an irritable person, or one who is often angry. Although I probably developed the habit when I was an angrier person than I am now. No matter my mood, I can insert a GD into any situation or conversation, even those with myself.
GD can be an expression of feeling impressed, as in, “Goddamn, that’s a beautiful sunset.” Yes, I clearly see the irony here.
Or, “Goddamn, that’s the goddamned Tower of London!”
It can express impatience, as in, “Goddamn it dog, would you hurry up and pee, it’s goddamned cold out here.”
GD is a nearly necessary response to some of the absolutely insane BS going on in the world today. Who knew, when I was a mere slip of a child beginning to experiment with cursing that it would become a truly authentic response to the mad hatters in our governments, and the right-wing heartless bitches and bastards trying to futz up everything that’s decent and kind.
In short, there is no shortage of the ways I can use GD, and no shortage of things that need a good damning in our erratic, chaotic world.
However, today I decided to stop damning things. Or, more accurately, asking God to damn things. Not that God takes direction from me, nor should. Still, maybe it’s time I gave God a break. Or at least allow God the prerogative of damning the CINOs (Christians in name only) without my help or instruction.
It will also be a break for those around me. That friend long ago isn’t the last person to despair over my swearing. She wasn’t even the first. My mother gave up trying to rid me of the cursing habit, until I became a mother and she tried again. Bless her, she never succeeded.
My son was next. I truly did try to stop swearing for him. Or at least to get more creative with it. I would leave out the God part, and just say, “Damn it all the way to hell and back,” which cracked him up when he was a pre-teen.
He tried even as a young child to help me stop swearing. And I tried, I really tried. We wrote New Year’s resolutions and burned them in the fireplace. Mine was to stop swearing. Yeah, that went up in smoke.
He then suggested substituting “snobblegobbles” for swear words. Again, I tried, I really, really tried. And sometimes it worked, because it’s impossible to stay mad when you’re saying snobblegobbles.
That was twenty years ago. Unfortunately, snobblegobbles just doesn’t get it for cursing about racist, homophobic, cruel, dangerous, tiki torch carrying, Capitol raiding and defacing, MAGA motherfuckers. Sorry kid.
Then there’s my new beau. He is a gentleman and a scholar. Really, he is, in every sense. He is also a minister.
He hasn’t overtly complained about my GDs, although he has noted my prolific swearing. More in an observational way, and something to tease me about. I, however, feel self-conscious asking God to damn things when he’s around. Understandably. And now, I feel self-conscious saying it even when he isn’t around.
Not that I think God has a strong opinion one way or the other. That whole, “Thou Shall not take the Lord’s name in vain,” thing actually means, don’t claim to be of God when you really aren’t. Don’t use the name of God to justify ungodly actions. Ahem, false prophets of mega non-denominational churches.
My decision to stop asking God to damn things is my own. The fact that it will make my son, my boyfriend, my mother in Heaven, and friends like my friend from the London trip happy and proud, is a bonus.
As for the word “fuck”? There’s no fucking way. That one stays.
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This post was previously published on New Choices.
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