Creative insults

In case you hadn’t noticed, I have the mouth of a sailor. I put it down to my yr 8 Ancient History teacher, Mr. Biersteker, a devout Christian man with a warped sense of humour (this was back when I was a student at Seoul International School, and he was my first encounter with a crazy Canadian). I have many fond memories from that class…not only was it the very first class I attended at S.I.S., but that first class was also when I encountered just how little American kids knew about Australia. My classmates were from all over the place, the children of businessmen, Ambassadors, G.I.s, but it was only the American kids who asked me questions such as “Do Australians REALLY ride around on kangaroos?”

Yes, I couldn’t believe I’d been asked that question either. I didn’t bat an eyelid and maintained a poker face while replying “Sure we do! You know how in the rest of the world they have taxis? Well, in Australia, we have kangaroos, and the taxi driver sits on its back in a saddle, and the passenger goes for a ride in the pouch!”

The particular group of kids who’d asked me that were so thrilled with my answer that I didn’t have the heart to break it to them that it was all a lie.

(There was also the kid who asked me what language we spoke in Australia, the numerous teachers who told me that spelling words like ‘favour’ instead of ‘favor’ was incorrect and as a result I lost many points in written assignments because of it, and then the crazy Texan media teacher who I adored so much that I still have a soft spot for a softly drawled “y’all”)

Woah, segue much?

Back onto the topic. Mr. Biersteker adored teaching us about Ancient torture methods (so much so that the pop quizzes nearly always held bonus marks sections that involved listing or detailing the torture methods of whichever culture we were studying at the time), but compared to the rather sanitized way that I’d always learnt history before, this was quite a shock to my system. The very first time he started detailing this kind of information to us, I went into shock and blurted out “What the hell?!” - which made him stop and turn to face me directly.

“What did you say??”

“Umm…what…the…hell?”

“Don’t you EVER use that phrase in my classroom ever again! I absolutely forbid it!”

I’d never had a problem with this before, and I was a bit confused, so I apologized but explained that I didn’t know what the problem was.

He, in turn, told me that he was Christian and he found it just as offensive to use the word ‘hell’ in vain as it was to say “Goddamn”. Not stopping there, he said that if I or anyone else in the class felt the need to express themselves in such a manner, he was more than happy for us to use “what the fuck?” or “what the crap?” as acceptable replacements.

Interesting guy, huh?

Anyway, I got into the habit of using ‘crap’ as my replacement word (which landed me in a shitstorm of trouble when I came back to Australia a few years later, let me tell you!), but since I never really uttered it as a cuss word, it was just an ordinary term of expression to me. And from there, the other words followed.

After years of using the same expletives, I think I’m kinda getting bored of them. Is that even possible? It must be…as in my dream last night, I was calling people scones and throwing rock-hard scones at their heads. Don’t even ask me why as I can’t remember the context…all I can remember is “You’re a SCONE!” *thunk*

I guess the end point of this post is that my head is an interesting place.

Edit - completely unrelated, but cuteness here! Looky looky at the Fury Cow!