Swear to me

Wasn’t it shocking the first time you ever heard a teacher swear?

 

I was in middle school, if memory serves. Our geography teacher, a man I’ll call Mr. Mustache, was doing his usual bang-up job of telling us where stuff was. At one point during his lecture, he let an expletive fly that snapped into sharp focus the attention of every last student in the classroom – and instilled in us more than a little fear. It’s kind of scary when a teacher cusses. Probably moreso if you’re the teacher.

 

Now, there’s a reason I call this guy Mr. Mustache. The walrus bristles on his upper lip were so thick and lustrous, so all-encompassing, that had the mighty warriors of the Incan empire laid eyes upon it, they would have fallen to their knees and worshipped him as a god. This is facial hair that would easily have been immortalized in sculptures, carvings, and whatever other medium the Incas could find; they’d have invented one just to capture the glory, the unmitigated awesomeness, of this ridiculously powerful set of face follicles. 

 

Yet an interesting thing happened that day. When he uttered the curse word – a synonym for “poo” – this power ’stache was sucked into his mouth like a great lion retreating to its cave. His dimples deepened; his face reddened. Somehow, while contorting his features thusly, he also managed to clench his jaw, at which point I thought, “Don’t do it! You’ll bite it off! You’ll die of mammoth-mustache asphyxiation!”

 

Mr. Mustache was obviously quite embarrassed. You’re not supposed to mention the “S” word when telling a bunch of 12- and 13-year-olds that Egypt is in northern Africa. To his credit, he played it cool. Once normal color returned to his face, he resumed his lecture, never mentioning or acknowledging this oratorical snafu. The mustache was restored to its former majesty.

 

The rest of us? We were kinda freaked out.

 

When you’re in school, teachers belong in a special subcategory of human. Same genus, different species. In this imagined biological classification, a teacher is a remote, cold-blooded creature with little capacity for mistakes, and possesses roughly the same moral code as a Jedi Knight, albeit the world’s most boring one. In reality, of course, this isn’t true; they’re regular people with regular morals, and rarely in casual conversation do they elicit comatose states by debating the merits of sines versus cosines. Try telling that to a kid, though.  When I was but a wee tot, teachers were this lofty, unreachable thing. The thought of one of them swearing was unfathomable. Easier to imagine the Dalai Lama drop-kicking a baby kitten in the kidneys.

 

Education is just one of those vocations in which you’re expected to project a certain image – in this case, being a role model for young people. Best not to drop the F-bomb around the impressionable set, lest they go home to dinner that evening and ask their parents to pass the motherbleeping peas. 

 

It’s a standard shared by only a handful of professions, and in some instances, foul language could be considered a prerequisite. Imagine if construction workers, firefighters and lobstermen were barred from sprinkling their language with expletives. Without that vent, the pressure would gradually build, until one day – out on the open ocean, or at the scene of a face-melting conflagration – their heads would explode, spewing forth a torrent of pent-up obscenities that’d wilt flowers and melt people’s eyes in their very sockets. Heck, even we journalists occasionally need that outlet. Around mayors and sate reps, sure, we have to be on our best behavior, but at the right time of day, a five-minute excursion into the bowels of the newsroom can expose an unwitting visitor the kind of salty talk usually reserved for gangster epics and rough-and-tumble barrooms. Ass damn. See? We can’t help ourselves. Or maybe that’s just me.

 

Children, for good reason, are discouraged from swearing by parents and authority figures; as a person gets older, the guiding forces in their life gradually slacken their admonishment. The more life experience you’ve got under your belt, the better judgment you generally possess in determining when, and if, it’s acceptable to whip out choice words and phrases. Say, for instance, you’re carrying a gigantic television out to your car, and just before you can get the trunk open, you drop the TV on your foot, shatter your big toe, simultaneously sneeze so hard that blood comes out your nose, and fall backwards onto the hard pavement – slamming your head against the ground while a passing bird poops on your face. In this situation, it is perfectly acceptable to spew forth any expletive you know, and even to make up a few. You don’t go through an ordeal like that and exclaim, “Gosh darnit, son of a biscuit, sugar!” You let ’er rip. You’d burst if you didn’t. That’s what swearing is for.

 

It’s a little less acceptable when you’re standing in front of a bunch of kids and pointing at a map. Which isn’t a rebuke of Mr. Mustache. Nobody’s perfect. It’s just interesting to encounter differing standards tucked into the various folds and cubbyholes of life. Pass a construction site and hear the “B” word in a context not meant for dogs, and it’s not a big deal. Hear the same word from your math teacher and it yanks you out of a light doze more effectively than any rattling snare drum.

 

College was the best. By the time you make it to an institution of higher learning, your professors tend to treat you as, if not fully adult, than at least someone who can handle the occasional reference to blush-worthy anatomical parts. That I remember the Mr. Mustache incident so clearly is testament to how thoroughly the pre-college experience is sanitized for kids’ protection, and how jarring it is when that protection falters. 

 

But would I go back in time just to watch his lip pelt quiver in embarrassment? You’re damn right I would.