Swearing

Swearing can be tremendously satisfying if done properly.  Overdone, it can lose its impact, but generally speaking it serves a noble purpose and can add weight and even humour to the most mundane utterance.  It can serve as a mild anaesthetic, like when one stubs one’s bastarding toe on the bastarding corner of the bastarding bed.  It can help show disdain or even contempt by its mere presence, without any other words being necessary, such as in the case of Phil fucking Collins. 

As a child, I was vaguely aware of this family of strange-sounding words which had the power to shock and to silence whole rooms, and I was keen to get involved.  Sadly I decided to start before I really knew what I was doing.  

I was about 6, and my elder brother had just given me the latest in a succession of dead legs, when I decided the time had come for some swearing.  I had had quite enough of being treated like this, and it was high time he started taking me seriously.  I realised my vocabulary might not be quite up to it yet, but I figured that could be got round with some improvisation.  So I called him a bunky stooker.  Initially the effect was exactly what I was after – Stunned silence.  Flushed with this success, I had another go, and called him a drumby pranks.  

Swearing can be tremendously satisfying.  And it can add weight and humour to the most mundane utterance. But if you try it without actually knowing any swear words you will be laughed at for the entire duration of the school holidays.