School Bus Education Sessions, Part 1: (F) Bombs Away!

I remember clearly the first time I cursed. I don’t mean the first time I thought a cuss word, or muttered it to myself, under my breath. I’m talking about the first time I said a curse word, out loud, for the entire world to hear. The momentous event occurred the morning after a snowstorm blanketed downtown Rochester with nearly a foot of pristine, powdery, crunchy snow. After breakfast, my siblings and I bundled up in our moon boots, snow suits, scarves, mittens/gloves, ear muffs, knit hats and headed outside. After engaging in the usual post-snowfall christening activities (making snow angels, throwing snowballs, eating snow—avoiding, of course, yellow or gray hued patches), Jemina and I attempted to build the best snow fort EVER. After 30 minutes of fruitless digging and packing and re-packing snow while James and Josh continuously kicked in our ill-constructed tunnels and makeshift “igloos,” however, we gave up and an impromptu snowball fight ensued.
At some point during the snowball fight, the impulse control center in my eight-year-old brain completely short circuited and I inexplicably yielded to the overwhelming temptation to push Jemina headfirst into the snow. And to bury her face in it. Until she cried. In the instant I let Jemina up, I felt momentary exultation, then overwhelming guilt, followed by the tightening of my scarf around my neck. Before I could process what was happening, I heard my oldest brother James yell, “Let’s see how you like it!” and felt his hands behind my head, propelling my face toward a giant snowdrift. Then, darkness. Freezing, burning, suffocating darkness. When James finally released his death grip on my scarf, I staggered to my feet, sputtering, spitting, pawing at my face with my wet mittens, trying to get the snow out from between my eyes and giant glasses so I could face James. And KILL him. In the nanoseconds that ensued, I considered and rejected several avenues of revenge, finally deciding to go for the jugular—figuratively speaking, that is. Before I tell you my brilliant idea, I have to briefly explain James’s role in our family. As the eldest child, James was a typical perfectionist, but with a Christian twist. He was always extremely devout, even at a young age. For a long time I thought he was born without the “sin” gene. In light of this information, you can better understand why I chose the following course of action.
I marched over to James, trembling with fear and adrenaline, clenched my fists and, with all the strength my awkward Amazonian body could muster, I shrieked, F------------ (yes, I said the actual word) Youuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!!!!!!!!!! Then, silence. Shock. Neighborhood parents’ and children’s jaws simultaneously dropped.
Now you might be wondering where an eight-year-old raised in a fundamentalist Baptist bubble would have learned such a filthy word. Two words: the bus. Because the Boyd siblings lived in a “transitional” neighborhood (nowadays some might refer to it as the ‘hood) in downtown Rochester, New York, we had to be bussed to our ultra Christian conservative school in the suburbs every day. Unfortunately, we were forced to intermingle with “public school kids” on our route. “Public school kids” were, according to Phil and Syl, heathens whose parents let them watch filthy television shows like The Simpsons, forced minimal church attendance and required little to no scripture memorization. And so, despite Phil and Syl’s concerted effort to shield me and my siblings from all things “worldly,” they unwittingly exposed us to the “real” world in the form of public transportation, where kids fought and cursed and bullied and engaged in a host of other unspeakable acts which I will not go into here.
If there is a moral to this story, it has to be that, when you remove a naïve child from her Baptist bubble and thrust her onto the wheels of iniquity, you cannot expect her to close her eyes and ears to all the seedy activity going on around her. She will hear cooler, older, wiser kids utter naughty words, one of which sounds a lot like “puck” but starts with “f.” While she may deduce that it’s probably a bad word, she will have no idea what it means or how bad, exactly, it is, on the spectrum of curse words. So you mustn’t judge her for filing the word away in the recesses of her brain to be used later should an opportune moment arise. Particularly if that moment involved a buttinski of an older brother who tried to suffocate her. The End.

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