Cuss-Free Zone, or, It's Tough Living with Gandhi

No more swearing in the workplace says Goldman Sachs but when I was growing up no one in my house swore - unless you counted Mom yelling  “God!” now and then, followed by the immediate disclaimer that she was praying for patience.Later on, my sister Nan took up swearing bigtime, though never while angry . Only while telling a funny story and the swears were strung together in such original fashion you felt like Mark Twain was in the room, emptying the dictionary on some fool he had in his cross-hairs.Me, I never swore – until that time I was carefully bundling an armful of wire coat-hangers and dropped them all again. OUT came that ugly one-syllable expletive. IN came Mom who scared even grown men when she rose up and fluffed out her fins.“IS THIS THE KIND OF LANGUAGE YOU’RE LEARNING FROM THAT DAVID?” she roared.I was 19 and David was the boy I had just said I was going to marry.But Dave never swears as I well know after all these years. In fact just a few months ago in a conversation about cursing I asked him if people ever swore at his place of business.“Not really,” he said. “Why, in this foul-mouthed day and age?” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Because I don’t?” (He’s the company president.)So hmmmm.  Maybe that whole Be-the-Change-You-Wish-to-See-in-the-World thing Gandhi said really DOES work....Anyway, I just Googled my name together with the ‘sh-’ word and 2 hits came up, in each of which I’m quoting somebody else. Maybe I'll have to stop doing even that.

Because after all I'm not just livin’ with Gandhi here on earth, I've also got Mom up in Heaven now, hearing everything I say. a hot summer day long ago, with Gandhi and the women who raised me