I attended a demolition derby this week with the boys at our local county fair. It was extremely crowded but I finally managed to find a spot on the bleachers. Unfortunately sitting directly behind me was a teenager who was saying things like "so I went to the fucking beach yesterday...used my parents fucking beach sticker, it was fucking hot...but the fucking water was fucking frigid..." You get the picture. I was trying to figure out how to say something without sounding like a jerk when the gentleman next to me (who actually didn't have any kids with him) turned around and asked the teen to curb his language, given that there were a lot of little kids who could hear him. I could have hugged this guy! The teen stopped swearing and I stopped stressing about it.
But this is a pet peeve of mine. Now, to be very honest, about the only word you will never hear from my lips is the "N-word". I can curse with the best of them. But I recognize that there is are times and places where certain language is not acceptable. Unfortunately there seems to be a large population of our society that doesn't realize this. It saddens me that although I would love to take my children to professional baseball and football games some day, I'm not sure that they are going to have a completely positive experience simply because so many spectators don't care to watch their language when out in public. I know that Fenway now has special "kid friendly" sections in the park (interestingly enough - those sections ban alcohol consumption for mom and dad). But what does it say about us as a society when we have to designate areas for this purpose? At what point did we decide that it was okay to swear, openly and loudly, in public?
You know what else bothers me - television. I remember when HBO used to only show R-rated movies after 8 pm. Now they show adult programming all day long. The word "bitch" is now completely acceptable during daytime programming, and the word "ass" is on it's way to acceptability as well. Yeah yeah, I know it's the parent's job to ensure that their children aren't watching inappropriate programs. I just wonder why we all can't do our best to limit what they can see during hours that they are obviously likely to be watching tv.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Interesting. Well, I would never encourage my children to run around cussing, but I am one of those parents who isn't overly concerned about my children hearing bad words. They get it that there are certain words which people consider "bad", and for now they are not too concerned about it, but later when they want to experiment with using them, I will teach them that these are simply words but that they carry more weight then other words and they are offensive to some people so if they are going to use them they need to understand that and use them appropriately. Because sometimes *shit* is appropriate.
My opinion anyway, for what it's worth!
Post a Comment