To say that conversational English has declined in the past 50 years would be the understatement of the millennium. Between so-called literature and popular music, Hollywood reflecting reality and reality reflecting Hollywood, profanity has become not only commonplace but seemingly necessary in some circumstances to convey 21st century “sincerity.”
And frankly, it really stinks.
Which is why I said to my wife Anna Diehl last Friday that we should start cleaning out our potty mouths by outlawing the words f— and sh— from our vocabularies.
Anna agreed to dump the F word but she was unwilling to jettison sh— as it’s an essential tool to express cogent responses. She didn’t put it that way, but what other reason could there be?
So we went with banning F. We agreed to follow an honour system whereby whoever broke the ban would dutifully confess and add a mark under his or her name, thus counting up our offences on a sheet of paper headlined “No F—.”
The first day (well, night actually) Anna said F eight times compared to my six.
The next day she lost it and said F almost 20 times compared to my one.
How smug I was about that.
Sunday, Anna changed the rules. It now meant a loonie each time one of us said F.
She managed to keep her F’s under $10 and I was a regular penny-pinching saint until one F slipped out and I followed it unthinkingly with, “F, I said F!” which cost me three bucks in total.
On Monday, maybe because I was back at work, our roles reversed and I wound up about $15 lighter while Anna was in for only a toonie or two.
One of her slips was when she affectionately mentioned “our f—ing honeymoon” – a two-night stay at the River Rock.
One of mine was: “I’m f—ing Zorro!”
That’s how easy it is to fall off the wagon.
The good news is that as the week progressed, we got it under control. There’s still a fair bit of “effin” and “friggin” and “freakin” and “flippin” – and Anna’s old standby: “fu-u-u-u-lippiny-cricket” – but at least we no longer talk like cheap Hollywood actors playing East Coast characters who hang out in warehouses.
And it’s only a beginning. Before we’re done, if I have my way, we’re going to be talking like characters in a Jane Austen novel, or at least an O. Henry short story.
Fu-u-u-u-lippiny-cricket, yes!
