Charcoal Drawings

I talked with my sister for about half an hour tonight, and after hanging up Mandy commented on the avalanche of vulgarity that was used.  "I've never heard you cuss that much.  Ever."  There was a metric fuck ton of impolite words used.  I explained that my sister taught me how to cuss, and could make a peg-legged pirate blush and plead for modesty.  I had to explain to my girlfriend that my sister, being nine years older than myself, used me for her entertainment when I was younger.  Being a little brother, I was always eager to fit in with the big kids.  When I was seven or eight, my sister told me that teenagers showed their mothers that they loved them by calling them bitches.  I promptly ran through the house, found my mom, yelled "Mom, you're a BITCH," with a gigantic she's-going-to-be-so-proud-of-me smile on my face, and then spent the rest of the evening in my room wondering why my mom would ever slap me and ground me for loving her.

It took me several years to discover the meaning of the word fuck, but that never persuaded me from mastering its usage.  While my sister never dared to trick me with this word, knowing full well that they would know where it came from, I did overhear it enough that I started to learn all of its delicate nuances.  My young ears were able to discern the staccato, piercing nature of the word, and realized that it was an excellent way to convey intense frustration of draw somebodies focus for important matters.  My mom first discovered that I knew this word because of Tecmo Bowl.  I didn't handle losing well as a child (or now, for that matter) and my friend Tim was just better at it than I was.  My mom came into the room to discover her eight year old angel spiking a Nintendo controller on the floor screaming "THIS IS A FUCKING JOKE!"  Her shock was only compounded when, after informing me that I was grounded for using that word, my response was "What fucking word?!?"  Several years later I discovered the meaning of the word and subsequently increased my usage.

The oddity of my family is that while my sister and I are as foul as soured milk, my dad never cusses.  The worst you'll hear him utter is the occasional "Aw, hell," or, his favorite, "How could you be so damn dumb?"  He has used this one quite a bit over the years.  My mom doesn't cuss, UNLESS she gets flustered.  Then she undergoes this change.  My mom is a tiny little woman standing maybe 5'2" with big, curly hair.  When she's had enough, her little fists clench up, her face gets red, and her first profanity busts from her lips like a balloon with too much air finally succumbing to the rules of physics.  Much like the balloon, once the structure has ruptured everything gets let out.  The usual result is my dad uttering a shock-faced, breathless "Jody" and my sister and I laughing at the hilarity of the scene.  Unless we're in public, in which case we assume the posture of the caricatures that you are used to seeing on streets and in bazaars.