If only I had a quarter for every time over the past 65 years, I uttered a naughty word.
Well, let’s make that the last 60 years.
I can’t credit living in the country for my development of barnyard language.
When I was five years old—around 1964—I picked up choice words from my grandma and grandpa Horn, my mom and dad, my oldest brother, Blaine, some of the kids in school and certainly on the school bus.
Even though I learned a few blue words from my mother, Mom did her best to toilet train my mouth.
One summer afternoon in 1966, I got in a heated argument with Blaine. My final words were, “shut up, sh**head!”
Mom was within earshot and ordered me inside our house. She escorted me to the bathroom, grabbed a bar of soap and forced my mouth open. Mom proceeded to rub the soap all over my tongue and inside my mouth.
I spent an hour removing the soap from my mouth with a wet washcloth. It took another two or three days for the taste of the soapy remnants to totally diminish.
I wish I could say that episode ended by use of profanity, but it didn’t. I was just more careful not to swear within earshot of my mother.
A few of my classmates tattled on me when they heard me curse — which I often did during intense playground competition—but my teachers simply gave me a lecture — that fell on deaf ears — and kept me in from recess, which was the standard punishment for all foul-mouthed children.
My educators never enshrined me as the recipient of a sudsy oral cleansing.
While my mother failed in her efforts to end my use of profanity, she did appeal to my embryonic conscience one summer.
I had become an accomplished tree climber and bird nest raider. When I was seven years old, I discovered a robin’s nest with three eggs snuggled between two elm tree branches about 15 feet above the ground. As if I were some kind of predatory snake, I made my way up the tree to the nest and then purposely broke the eggs by dropping them to the hard tree limbs below.
Rather than engaging in a screaming episode or whipping me, Mom sent me to my room and told me to sit and think about how the mother robin was going to feel when she came back to discover her babies had been killed.
At first, I resisted the thought, but after two or three hours, Mom’s words of wisdom sank in, and an incredible guilt invaded my mind, and stayed there for a long time.
To this day, whenever I see a robin, I think of that incident. I still can’t explain how I could have been so cruel and unfeeling at the time.
And, yes, I have cursed myself for ever pulling that stunt.