When I was 10, we'd just moved to Florida and I was getting first hand experience that YOU DON'T WALK BAREFOOT IN FLORIDA. If it isn't fire ants or worms, it's sandspurs.
So, there I am barefoot, pulling sandspurs painfully out of the soles of my feet, and I mumble, "Damn prickers."
My dad, who I did not know was nearby, bellowed: "WHAT DID YOU SAY?!?!"
I sqeaked, "Damn prickers?" and flinched.
He wholloped me a good one. He asked where I'd heard that word, and I said, M*A*S*H, which I was promptly forbidden to watch again. I NEVER said another swear word, until....
I was 16 and I was really upset that I'd just gotten dumped, and I told my mother, "I am going out to the golf course and screaming obscenities at the top of my lungs."
She said, "OK." And I did. Every horrible word I could think of (all 3 of them), I screamed. (I went after hours, of course, would've scared the golfers.)
I came back and she said, "Feel better?" and I said, "Yes."
Didn't say another swear word until about 10 years ago. My boyfriend and dad both tell me it isn't "ladylike," so I try not to do it around them, but sometimes I do for shock value. My best friend and I cuss SO BAD when we're together. Sometimes I do it in front of my daughter, which I'm not proud of, and since she's been to private religious school for the past three years, tells me how terrible I am. I've never heard her say a bad word, and she's 16. (I've heard horror stories about 12-year olds, so I consider myself lucky.) If they've bleeped out cuss words on the songs on the radio, and I know the unedited version, I will sing the expletives in the dead space, and she gets soooo mad. ("Let me hear you say this S**T is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S....) My favorite expressions are, WTF? (the long version, of course) and F*** that S**t! I only use the F word as an adjective sometimes. Occasionally as a verb.
