A spectacle of myself

    Oh yeah, I was good. Really, really good.

     I mean, I was making the old computer whir. Her project would be ready in no time at all, just as  soon as I . . .

    And the screen froze.

    And the cursor stopped

    And the word came out.

    "Oh fragjammet," I muttered.

    Of course, the word wasn't actually "fragjammet" but good taste and my boss's blue pencil prevent me from writing what I actually said. It was THE word - a word normally reserved for a smoke-filled barroom when somebody spills your beer and you don't have enough to pay for another so you have to trail after him poking him on the shoulder until he either buys you another or the poking escalates to the ribs and head. It's definitely not a word you say in front of your mother.

    But rather than ramming a big block of Dove down my gullet, she chose to ignore it.

    I couldn't believe it.

    I've never said the word in front of her.

    It's not that the word is alien to my vocabulary. Before becoming a newspaperman, I had a couple of real jobs working in local factories where use of the word once in every sentence is an integral part of the industrial dialect.

    "Harry grabbed my fragjammeting hammer out of my fragjammet hand, and fragjammet if it didn't slip and drop on my fragjammet foot!"

    "What'd ya say to the fragjammeting guy?"

    "Fragjammet"

    So I've said the word a lot. And I know lots of other words too and have, on occasion, launched a tirade of profanity that would make Satan blush. And I've said a lot of it in front of a lot of people including snooty waiters,  income tax auditors and Reform Party canvassers but never, ever have I said it in front of my mother.

    And I'm 43 years old.

    So that tells you something about my mom.

    Oh, and before you start getting Freudian on me, I've said it a lot in front of my wife too. (Never at her, mind you, because I find sleep much more restfully in bed than on the couch.)

    There are many who say that profanity has no place in our mouths, that it is common, vulgar, and that human expression need not be so base.

    I don't know. Like Mark Twain said "Profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer."

    Besides,  let's hear what they say when they drop a fragjammeting hammer on their foot.