I Swear

One of the cool things about having a son is the fact that he likes to play video games with me; one of the bad things about me and video games is that when things go wrong (and how they go wrong) I tend to swear... I swear loudly, I swear often. Once the seal is broken on the swear jar I drop f-bombs like a rapper drops... well f-bombs.

Let me take you back to a time before Duncan. In those days leading up to the birth of my son my wife had deemed it acceptable, not desired mind you, but acceptable, for me to swear in two places: sitting in traffic dealing with idjits or sitting in front of the computer/console swearing at some dire circumstance that was obviously the fault of whatever game I was playing.

Fast forward to the days of Duncan, a boy who is almost 2 1/2 and likes to parrot much of what he hears. Here I am sitting in front of the TV playing Burnout: Paradise City crashing for the 5th time in 7 seconds (only 4 of those were actually my fault) and the urge to swear is rising rising rising.

Lest some of you gentler people gasp at this heretofore unseen aspect of Sir William I'll let you in on a little snippet of my family history. My father is an Ex-US Marine... to my father the f-word is not a swear word; it is an adjective. He knows there are some instances where this word should not be used (and in those instances he says little to nothing) but when he is in his element my dear pater can make a sailor blush.

As for me, it wasn't until I went to kindergarten that I learned the f-word was not used in polite society.

For the most part I've been fairly successful at not swearing in front of my child. The worst that's happened so far has been an occasional cwap and one memorable occasion when Duncan says, parodying his old man: "You suck! you suck! You suck! You suck!... I sorry."

So lets re-visit last Sunday. My boy had asked if we could crash cars together (and how we could crash those cars) and I was trying some of those cases where I wasn't actually supposed to crash cars.

I was of course crashing left right and center, and over the guard rail and into the water and over the side of the cliff, and in the barn, and in the parkade... well you get the picture. I was having a very difficult time not swearing. There was some yelling at the game (yes it does help), possibly a couple of "craps" but no f-bombs.

Not long after things went south in the GT 500 Cruiser, Carole took the boy out of the house to Auntie Ronnie's (he wanted to see Iain). I watched them leave, waved good boy... came back and starting driving.

And I crashed...

... and I swore....

... I swore loudly...

... I swore often...

I swore.

And it felt good.

English degree be damned (ooo I swore) sometimes catharsis is a damn good thing.