Things heard around my apartment

At 12:30AM last night, I was sitting in my living room with my three roommates: Ben, Darrin and Mark. Although I was taking part in the sporadic conversations, (everyone was studying so these conversations were separated by silent periods) I took the opportunity to listen to the speech patterns of my three friends.

At one point, I closed my eyes to rest them and for a split second, I thought I was in a Mormon film. The following phrases were used during these conversations at least once:

• 'He was suck a friggin' ace.'
• 'Oh my flippin' heck.'
• 'Fudge!'
• 'Abso-friggin'-lutely
• 'Fetch! Are you serious?'

Welcome to Utah, where even profanity is done in moderation.

Now, I'm a fan of euphemisms just like most Mormons, but it seems to me that these particular displays of self-control weren't so much a sign of devotion to certain principles, but the mark of a society that's forgetting the beauty and power of a four letter word.

It's my belief there are certain times where profanity is not only necessary, but can add a delightful sense of humor to any situation. For example: I stubbed my toe getting out of bed the other morning. At that moment, it wasn't just the pain that was getting to me, it was the overwhelming feeling that this was a sign of things that would come to pass that day. I promptly yelled, 'Shit!' thinking the apartment was empty. At that same moment, my roomie Ben was outside my door and burst out laughing. I couldn't help but laugh myself at my situation as I grabbed my foot and fell back on my bed.

Now if I had chosen a slightly different lexicon, we'll take one from the examples from above, and had yelled, "Fudge!" I believe things would have been different. First, I would have felt oppressed, or repressed, or whatever the correct terminology is. Not allowing myself to express...well...myself should be a sin. It's like placing a big black censorship bar over the breasts of Venus De Milo. Language, like other mediums is art and we all know that censorship is bad in any form. If everyone kept repressing themselves, eventually someone would take it upon themselves to enforce this repression and then we'd have the next Joseph Stalin right here in Provo, sending anyone with the heuvos to drop the B-bomb (bitch) to Siberia (or perhaps Moab in Utah's case). A step like this is one step closer to fascism.

Also, Ben probably wouldn't have laughed at my response to my own pain, I wouldn't have been able to laugh it off myself, and because we all know The Secret works, my negative expectations for that day would have manifested themselves (yeah, thanks universe) and my mood would have become worse and worse--not to mention I probably wouldn't have got any checks in the mail that day.