The f***ing of America
In 1959, when I was in 4th grade, the teacher accused me, falsely, of scribbling the F-word on the boys’ bathroom wall.
I was offended that she would point at me because I was a good kid and would never do such a thing. To this day, I do not know who the profane scribbler was, but I did, at the time, suspect my classmate, Johnny whatshisname.
Perhaps that traumatic experience is why, to this day, I am offended whenever I hear the F-word. And that’s just about everywhere.
Today, as my wife and were taking our daily stroll on our hometown greenway, I heard the dreaded word uttered by a passerby who was conversing with someone. It still perplexes me that the obscene F-word is now used in normal speech by seemingly decent people.
This is a little bit like the “like” phenom, which is, although less offensive, has always bothered me. Another common word that we hear on the greenway, and in many other contexts, including speech uttered in TV shows and online gabbing.
You know what I’m talking about. You probably hear it every day:
“I’m like. . . — “
The phrase would certainly be useful if the speaker was saying, “I’m like a normal person looking at my phone… etcetera etcetera. . . that is to say, the word is used as a conjunction in an English sentence. (I was a useless English major at LSU. They let me get out of there with a parchment upon which was printed, “BS, General Studies.”)
But I digress. I was railing about the F-word. My sensitivity was pushed over the edge of alarm when, today, I heard brother Frankie, one of my contemporary post-evangelical brothers in Christ, use the F-word on his podcast.
I mean, if bro Frankie used it, I suppose it’s now a given that the F-word is just part of the vernacular. Times change, and so does, I suppose, language.
I mean, that F-word began its rise to notoriety as a stand-in for “damn” as in “I don’t give a damn!” But nowadays you hear: “I don’t give a f***.”
We’re going downhill fast! Now I’m standing at the Old North Church, messaging: One if by “f***”, two if by “like.”
Even so, my mercy toward my fellow English-speakers is now reaching full acceptance of the change that has taken place during my 73 years on this earth. So I’ll just go aheaad and write it: I don’t care, any more, what the f*** people say. I don’t give a damn. It’s a free country. Let the country degenerate into a pile of MAGA shit.
MAGAmania has taken over he country anyway. Now that my madness is settling into aged reticence, I will simply keep my madness to myself and plead with my fellow Americans: MAKA! Make America Kind again.
