One of the most vivid memories of my childhood was my usually mild mannered mother sternly extracting my younger brother from his seat at the dining table, taking him to the little powder room across the hall, and washing his mouth out with Ivory soap.
Just seconds before his removal he had told me to shut up, a definitely punishable offense in our home. The cleansing apparently worked because he never again told me to shut up, at least not to my face.
Although it may be hard to believe, shut up was the closest thing to curse words I ever heard anywhere in my world in Southeastern Virginia in the 1950s. As I grew older, of course, I became aware that there was a whole different vocabulary from the one I had been taught. I also came to believe that occasional use of the less offensive of those words probably could be forgiven. After all, Shakespeare told that damned spot to go away.
Today, I am saddened by the increased frequency of blasphemous and profane utterances everywhere around me. Whether it is the product of a deep-seated anger which has taken hold in our society or the fact that we have relaxed much of the moral code of past decades, cursing remains an offensive, rude and disrespectful behavior.
A friend, who attended Hampden-Sydney College only a decade ago, shared with me the little etiquette booklet that all freshmen received. It is titled, To Manners Born To Manners Bred, and has the following sage advice to young gentlemen: “Do not let profanity become a natural part of your vocabulary, or you will find it difficult to avoid using it at inappropriate times. We all get mad; we all swear at ourselves in our frustration for the stupidity of our own actions. We use the words because we know them, and we are too upset to think of any more elegant expression of how we feel. This is not desirable, but it is human and very different from peppering your everyday speech with expletives or using profanity to express surprise or emotion. Such speech does not make you sound tough or clever, only vulgar.”
And that’s the truth, By Jove!
Ginger Philbrick is the owner of Because You Are Polite LLC. You are invited to email your manners questions to her and she will respond as time and space allow. You may contact her at youarepolite1@gmail.com.
