So, two things you have to know before I can start talking my ass off. First of all, I swear in real life significantly more than I swear online. (Most people seem to do this the other way around because the internet has the safety of anonymity. I dunno why I use fewer bad words in the faceless realm of the internet than I do in front of people in a position to make my life difficult over it.) I talk a lot anyway, at least with people I'm comfortable around, and it's not an exaggeration to say that every two or three words is some permutation of the word 'fuck' or some other objectionable profanity. Second piece of background knowledge: my boyfriend's family, excluding his oldest sister and his dad, are hardcore Jehovah's Witnesses. These are the kind of people who are acutely aware of everything other people do that they find unwholesome or inappropriate. They're not the type to overlook excessive use of unnecessary bad words.
I don't particularly care what most of his family think of me apart from the aforementioned dad and sister--mostly because they're people he really likes and whose opinions matter to him--but they certainly don't give a crap about PG language. So when I went to visit a few months ago I talked like I always do, which meant lots of swear words. I honestly expected to get flak for it--his mother especially doesn't like me because I'm not appropriately religious and say and do a lot of really inappropriate shit. I was really surprised when I didn't, but only mentioned this upon returning home and asked what everyone thought of me now that I wasn't there.
"They like you a lot," he said. "They think you're great. Lo said Mom was having a really hard time trying to come up with a good reason to hate you."
"Really? I thought they'd be pissing and moaning about all the swearing."
"You didn't swear all that much. Maybe, what, twice?"
"Uhm..." I was confused. "Twice every sentence, maybe!"
"That much? Seriously? I didn't even notice that. My mom definitely didn't. She'd've said something otherwise."
"How could YOU not even notice it??"
"I think it's the way you talk. It's so fluid and fits so well together--you don't notice it because it sounds so natural for all the words to be exactly where you put them."
Last week he said the same thing again--that the way I talk minimizes the impact of the bad words I use because no part of my speech seems superfluous or unnecessary.
I really wonder if it's just them or if more people just completely fail to notice my proclivity for profanities. I wasn't allowed to swear if my parents were in earshot so I guess I learned not to put the emphasis on naughty words the way most other people do.
Equally possible is they're just stupid. You have no idea how mind-bendingly stupid his mother is--she's so bad she doesn't even remember regularly that her son is deathly allergic to shellfish and keeps bringing it into the house. It's a wonder any of those kids survived to adulthood...
No comments:
Post a Comment