Potty Mouth

My brother and I were taking a casual stroll through our neighborhood. He was probably 12, that would make me around 9. "I dare you to cuss," he taunted. If I remember correctly, I refused. But maybe I did; that was a long time ago.

Fast forward 20 years. While I don't resemble a sailor, I do use 'bad' words on a regular basis. Mostly I use them in the car. My poor kid. I can just imagine her during driving lessons when she's 15 1/2, screaming "Watch out, dumb a**" when someone pulls in front of her. I can't tell you how many "I'm sorry, I shouldn't called that driver a mother f****r" I go through during each car ride.

I am trying to cuss less. Part for the sake of the kid, part for the sake of my vocabulary. I just think there's other things I can say. Such as, "Observe your surroundings more carefully, you tactless, imprudent imbecile!"

I usually don't mind when other adults cuss, even when they do so a lot. But if I'm being honest, I often think those adults could also come up with other things to say.

I recently began talking to a new guy. He's got a potty mouth. He cusses a lot, but he's never inappropriate. All I have to go by right now is our phone conversations. A few days in, I did begin to wonder if he had anything else to say. Then I noticed the most peculiar thing. This man was using 'big' words just as often, if not more, than 'bad' ones! Words like "delectable" and "accentuate" came spewing out of his mouth as easily as the unmentionables.

Now that's what I'm talking about! This man unknowingly just rewrote the 'Code of Cussing'. For each 'bad' word used, one must also use at least one 'big' word!

Hearken, bitches!

Down from the Crane

I need the local newscast like a pregnant woman needs folic acid.

After years of watching Atlanta news a minimum of 2x/day, I've come to realize that like history, the daily news repeats itself every now and then.

"Let his a** f****** jump!"

That's what I screamed at the TV last night when I learned that, yet again, some crazy guy had climbed to the top of a construction crane and threatened to jump. You should have seen the chaos surrounding the attempt to get this wacko down from the crane. APD had a chunk of Peachtree shut down and even inflated one of those gigantic water trampoline thingeys.

My creator cheated me in the area of compassion. But even if I did have my fair share, I can't imagine wasting any of it on this freak. I'm so sick of f****d up adults acting like they're actually f****d up more than anybody else. Wacko shouldn't have climbed up a Buckhead crane; instead, he should have climbed into the elevator of a Buckhead high rise and visited a therapist! Let's face it, every adult on the face of this planet is messed up in one way or another. But, as adults, we need to take steps daily to heal ourselves. Attention-seeking acts like this are just plain stupid. If you want to kill yourself, go ahead. But clogging up Peachtree was wrong on so many levels.

Find your version of folic acid - prayer, meditation, a nap, laughter, a long drive, therapy, etc. - and take it daily. And recognize a construction crane for its intended purpose - a piece of machinery used to build something bigger and better than what's there now.