F*** Is a Euphemism for Foul

When I was in my twenties, and realized that swearing in the privacy of my own car at the other drivers and their bad driving habits was getting me into bad habits of my own, God taught me how to divert the Tourette's reaction:

Say what you mean!

You don't really mean you want that driver who cut in front of you to be condemned to hell. You mean you wish he'd drive better. So that's what you should say:

Drive better!

You don't really mean you want to rape the car (or the driver) that turned left in front of you and would have caused a really bad accident if your reactions had been slower. Even if he or she won't hear you, instead of "F*** you!" say,

Quit that!
Slow down!
Drive safe!

"And you really, really, really don't mean you want the stop light that turned red when you thought you wanted to go through it to melt down into excrement. This one is a little harder. Instead of "S***!", Say,

Getting there a couple of minutes later is better than having someone call from the hospital to tell them I won't be making it into work any more.

And the conversation continued, with a little discussion of some priorities I had misplaced that were causing me stress.

(If you're curious, the lyrics from The Fixx's hit song probably helped me focus on saying what one means -- one thing does lead to another. But I had been aware of the idea well before then, as from Matthew 5: 37 -- "Yea (for) yea, nay (for) nay".)

But the lesson of saying what I mean has helped me to divert myself from Tourette's syndrome-like behavior on a number of occasions, and has actually helped me learn to communicate better. (I'm still pretty bad at communicating.)

(BTW, you do know that "Oh, my God!" is actually the beginning of a prayer -- usually for help, right? "Oh, my God, please help me not to be so jealous of my neighbor!" or some such.)

Recently, stress has been building up again, and I find myself referring to Bill Cosby's euphemistic substitutions

Fow! Fi-eau! Fow-fau!

(I forget from which routine.)

And I say things like

• Foul!
• That's a foul! (red card)
• (Things are all) fouled up!
• You (committer of) foul (deeds)! 

although those are all a bit more judgemental words than I should be using, especially the last one.

Well, maybe

I call foul!

is not so overly judgemental.

The thing is, when we say what we mean, we often find that we care more about other people and what happens to them than we think we want to admit. What we really mean is

• Play fair!
• Let's do that again, right this time.
• What a mess! Let's try to clean it up.
• Is doing that going to make you happy?

And I recall today something that occurred to me many years ago -- that "fuck", "shit", "hell", "damn", etc. are actually the euphemisms. We use them when for some reason we are too tired, too embarrassed, too lazy (or too something!) to say what we really mean, or (especially) what we really should mean.

(There is some non-literary irony in this. Erstwhile expletives are developing new, softer semantics. For instance, in many cases, in the local vernacular,

F*** off!

no longer means

Go somewhere I don't have to watch and play with your genitals by yourself!

so much as

Go take a time-out.

Still, since the expletives are somewhat ambiguous, I think it's better to try to understand what we mean and say it.)