On Growing Up, With Swearing

This is a personal narrative essay I wrote for the first assignment for my Intro to Academic Writing paper at Massey. I got an A for it, though it did have some missing commas and other small problems which I haven't fixed yet but will. It was supposed to be on an aspect of literacy but you know me, I couldn't restrict myself to just writing about learning to read or write. It had to be more interesting and it had to be more specific. And my tutor was pleased he got to read something different as well. Just posting in case anyone is interested in reading it.

(*note names have been changed to protect the innocent)

On Growing Up, With Swearing 

I learned to swear outside the Girl Guides Hall in Gosnells, Western Australia, lounging on a large concrete pipe we used as play equipment, while Stacey Smithers called Karen Brown a ‘fucking mole’*. I was ten and she had to explain to me what ‘mole’ meant.

“It’s like slut,” she said. “Only bitchier.” I didn’t know what ‘slut’ or ‘bitch’ meant either. Sometimes new language is thrust upon you and you need to learn it fast.

“So what’s a slut then?” I asked, biting my fingernails.

Two weeks before this I was enrolled in a convent school in Sydney, in a brown checked woollen uniform complete with beret, and six months before that I was attending my father’s funeral. There was still a lot to think about as I contemplated the black dirt and sweat that outlined my sandals, my brown legs poking out of khaki shorts, on the dusty outskirts of Perth. I was trying to get my bearings, on life and on swearing, in the afternoon between primary school and an evening session of Girl Guides.

Anna giggled. Then she leaned in, whispering. “A slut is when a girl likes boys and does stuff with them.” I searched Anna’s eyes for clues. She may have winked. I blushed. It was embarrassing not to know.

Gosnells is about an hour south of the Swan River. That’s the division in Perth – it’s what side of the river you come from. If you lived there you were a ‘bogan’ or a ‘yobbo’ (‘yob’ for short) and wore black t-shirts, pale blue Levi cords and brown or black DBs (desert boots). You listened to AC/DC and KISS. The beach was a long way away. And outside the Girl Guides Hall, on local bus stops and the Gosnells train station (where you could take the hour long trip to the city and swap trains for another half hour to the coast) the slogan “Gozzy Boys Rule” was plastered in spray paint on every available wall, just like dogs piss on hydrants.

It is funny to think of the words we used back then. A condom was a ‘franger’. A stupid person was a ‘fuck tard’ or a ‘fuck muppet’ or sometimes even a ‘tard fuck’, another clear derivative of ‘retard’, which was also common. There was this saying, “A slut sleeps with everyone. A bitch sleeps with everyone but you”. We said ‘screw’ and ‘fuck’ but the most popular verb for shagging was to ‘root’, as in “You wanna root that bitch?” or the romantic pick up line “Do you wanna root?”

I was fifteen when I talked to my cousin Rob about swearing. He boarded at Aquinas College, an affluent boy’s school (north of the river). He was a few years older than me, about to leave school for university, and full of expensive facts. We were lying on the trampoline, with sausage and cigarette smoke drifting past us from the barbecue, discussing the origins of words.

“So what do you think of ‘fuck’, then?” I asked. I thought he might call me a retard for not knowing.

“Oh that’s an old old word,” Rob answered, all thoughtful and smart. “They've been using it since convict times. If you got caught doing stuff with someone your age, say, the judge in court would say you were up for fuck – felonious, unlawful, carnal knowledge”.

That same year I was having a conversation with my mother, during the dishes.

“I read in the paper that forty percent of girls lose their virginity by the time they’re sixteen,” she said.

“So what?” I blurted, knowing what was coming and not being able to stop it.

“Which camp do you fall into?” She was washing and I was wiping. I couldn’t believe my ears.

“It’s none of your business, you bitch,” I muttered, half under my breath.

 Looking back, it was a normal teenage thing to do, talking back to my mother, using the language of rebellion, but there was a lesson here and I was about to learn it. When you’re standing in your mother’s kitchen, doing the dishes, no matter what she says to slander you, and whether you deserve it or not, DO NOT SWEAR at your mother. A slap across the face with a wet hand has a powerful and long remembered sting in it.