Curse You!

Apparently, if my blog was a movie, it would be rated R:

OnePlusYou Quizzes and Widgets

The rating was arrived at because of the presence of these words: death, hell, fucking, sex.

I can understand why the cuss words would make my blog unsuitable for children, but “death”? Whatever. I still think that the rating is incorrect because my blog is not for mature audiences, what with all the juvenile ramblings going on in these pages.

Anyway, I tend to curse a lot here, but I don’t have such a potty mouth in real life (excepting the times when I watch basketball). Lately though, I find myself saying “putcha” a lot. Is that such a bad thing?

Back in grade school, I was admonished by my teacher in front of the class when she heard me say “gago” (most of my not-so-happy childhood memories happened when I transferred to another school when I got accelerated, but that’s another story). She kept on saying how disappointing my conduct was and how cursing is not proper for someone about to become a lady (I was 10 years old, what do I care about “becoming a lady”?!). The injustice of her words, to my young and impressionable mind, was stinging. It’s not as if I’m the only girl or student in the school who curses; I was just unlucky to get caught! Reading between the lines, what my teacher was really trying to say is that it’s not an excuse that I’m studying in a public school or that I live in Tondo, I should never, ever, cuss. The reprimand worked. I no longer said “bad words”.

Enter high school – and my world was turned upside down. Here I was, the freshman recently graduated from a public school in Tondo, about to start her high school in a Catholic university with new classmates who came from other private, Catholic schools – and one of the first people she encountered was a junior shouting “putang ina!” at the top of her lungs! Welcome to the world of kolehiyalas!

After that, I relaxed quite a bit when it comes to cuss words. I even learned a few minced oaths along the way. It didn’t even bother me when the friends of my crush were disappointed to hear me say “ulol”. But it still bothers me a bit that I shock some people whenever they hear me mutter profanities. Maybe it’s a poor justification when I say that other people cuss, too, but it’s true. So why should it be bad for me and not for others? And it’s not as if I’m directing the cuss words to a specific person.

For me, cursing is just another way of expressing myself. Who gives a shit anyway?