First Cuss

The first time I cussed out loud was in the eighth grade.  We were in the cafeteria for lunch or some other assembly for our grade.  By that age (13?) my peers already casually cussed whenever the chance arose and an adult was not present.  Paula Walker, Joanna McCord, Tammy Garrett, and someone else I can't quite remember were sitting with me at the table.  Or rather, they had allowed me to sit with them.

I was a quiet mousy girl.  One of the smallest in my class.  In the class photos I was inevitably placed on the front row because of my petite stature.  The others, who were my peers but never felt like my peers because they did not know my situation, saw me as an outsider.  Often I still feel that different-ness.

We sat at the table, the other girls discussing the cuss words they used.  Basically trying to show how "grown up" they were.  Then they turned to me after one of them pointed out that they never heard me cuss or even speak out of line.  They did not know what the consequences of doing so would mean for me at home.  I worked to be quiet and unseen at home so as to avoid trouble with my step-father/uncle who would have given me tremendous slaps to the head and face and/or beaten me with a belt.

At school I was quiet and tried to be unnoticed because I wanted  to avoid the bullies who at this point had noticed not only that I was different but was not maturing emotionally like they were.  Even these girls, who I had once thought of as friends had turned on me that year.  They would take my few personal things and keep them from me.  Throwing these things back and forth to each other over my head or simply taking something (like a precious book) and never returning it.  Yet I sat with them that day because they let me and I simply did not want to be alone.

So they cajoled me that not only did I not cuss, I probably didn't even really KNOW how to cuss.  Of course I knew how.  I had heard cussing at home both towards me and others and towards situations.  But I didn't want to because it felt like I would be giving up some pure part of myself that I'd never be able to get back.  So I told them that I didn't want to.  Which in turn caused the cajoling to turn to open mocking and hostility.  They would make the "baby" leave the table because she couldn't handle cussing.

I wanted to cry.  So often I wanted to cry but I couldn't back then.  Caught between being controlled and abused at home and then being mocked and bullied at school.  I couldn't cry in front of them.  I felt no alternative than to let slip a full sentence of cussing.  It stopped their mocking (momentarily) as they sat, mouths agape, at little miss priss uttering "god damn motherfucking son of a bitch".  These days, that seems like nothing.  In 1982, that wasn't something a good little girl said.

And yet, I admit that there might have been something I lost that day.  Like Pandora's box, once opened, I  could not stop cussing a little here and a little there to this very day.  Still seen as very rude, unladylike, and uncultured in certain company, I open my mouth and the words at times come out unbidden.