When did I start using strong language?

Certainly not when I was in high school. The group that I mostly hung out with didn’t use strong language, so neither did I. At least not on any kind of regular basis. 

I recall when I arrived at Penn State and heard so many other guys, especially the ones from the big cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, throwing around those forbidden words, I couldn’t help but join in my new found freedom of expression.

It didn’t come naturally to me though. I remember Ed Stutz used to tease me because I tended to enunciate the final “ng” sound in fucking rather than pronouncing it as fuckin’ like everyone else did. Of course, Ed also used to tease me about my Pennsylvania Dutch accent, which I hadn’t completely eradicated yet. I was still working on that, but it was easier now that I was out of the environment.

I remember as well that in my History of the English Language course, the prof included a bonus question on the final exam. She wanted us to list any examples of vulgar terms we had learned since coming to Penn State. The only new vulgarisms I had learned, and there were quite a few of them, involved different ways of saying, uh, spanking the monkey. So I dutifully listed all of them. I got an A in that course, by the way.

My freedom of expression did not last.

Once I moved back to Richland, I mostly returned to my old habits of not using strong language. At least most of the time.

Not that I felt there was anything wrong with using verbal epithets or vulgar language. It was merely that when in Rome, or in this case Richland.

And most folks in Richland didn’t use any words stronger than an occasional damn, at least not in public.

Of course, most of my interaction with Richlandites occurred after my parents bought the local hardware store and I went to work for them.

Eventually, I moved to Harrisburg and then to Philadelphia, and I became a person who never used strong language at work—except once a year. And then it was mostly for shock value and/or to get a laugh.

But in my private life, I did notice that I was using strong language a lot more. I think this was mostly due to the influence of movies. The language in movies had gotten a lot freer over the years, and that had an effect on my use of language as well.

And then along came Deadwood.

After watching that show, certain terms became part of my regular vocabulary.

And they remain there to this day.

Even when I write a blog post, if I’m expressing a strong opinion of any kind, often the first draft is laced with words that do not make it into the final published draft. To be clear, I remove the strong words, F bombs and such, not because I see anything wrong with them, but because I feel they lose whatever effectiveness they might have with too frequent a repetition.