bad words

as the father of an inquisitive 5-year-old i need to be attentive of my actions and my language. the kid is a sponge and has now repeated phrases and words that are too obvious in their crudity and embarrassing to print here. well, kind of embarrassing but not really. i guess. are there bad words? or is the way words are employed matter more? any reader who ventures here for just a couple of posts, or speaks to me in a relative comfortable setting, knows that i love those words that are often censored and censured from a modest selection [like network tv] of public life.

which leads me to wonder: could there be such creatures as bad words? i tend to think that words are not bad but how words are used. not that there aren't any seriously serious loaded words out there but i recall a post by geof huth [too lazy right now to search for it for linkage -- trust me, okay] where he rebuts an assertion that the word cunt is too offensive for him to use. can't remember huth's exact phrase but it went something like he couldn't abide such limitations.

yesterday at lunch bad words, like fuck and shit, became the topic of conversation. the majority of my lunch companions agreed that bad language is awful to use. i said, i don't think there are bad words but inappropriate ways and circumstances language can be used. even the word sugar can sound like a death threat uttered in a sinister and awful tone. conversely the word fuck said from the right person in the right moment of intimate candor can be the sweetest utterance.

i love language and live inside the world of words in all parts of my life, as a poet, as a father, and at my day job. as a, to use a dated term, man of letters double and triple negatives and slang can sound more poetic than shakespeare. i told my dining companions that language is a system of agreements and other than say syntax those agreements have changed in the past and will change in the future.

what i think i need to do as a father is teach my child that words are not bad but the most glorious pieces of physical and intellectual life. how you use them makes all the difference. the same words uttered in love can also be spit out in hate. invectives are not diction but are made in tone and meaning. words do hurt, make no mistake about it, but they also are greater vehicles for peace love and understanding [said in deference to declan mcmanus and nick lowe].

if in the beginning there was the word then in the end will be a word as well. i can just imagine what that final word might be. if there is another cataclysmic event such as an extinction-level meteor striking the earth i think the person or persons who look up into the sky and sees that giant fireball plummeting toward land i think the final words might just be oh shit.