Ever since I wrote the last line of the last post, I've been wondering whether I should delete it, change it, tone it down. I guess that proves the power that certain words can have! And it lays my own tricky relationship with swearing very bare. I see those words, and they don't feel like my own. When I was younger, I used to think I was not cool enough to swear. I was in awe of kids who were able to do so in a nonchalant way; my parents tell me that when I came home from my first day of kindergarten, I said, very excitedly, "I met a boy who can swear with his fingers!" I was so impressed; even at 5, though, I knew it was something that I would never feel comfortable doing. Just like I never feel comfortable saying the catch phrases of the day; they always feel wrong on my tongue, awkward. I'm strangely impressed by people who can easily incorporate new phrases (like the current use of "rocking" as a verb--"she was rocking the blue hair") into their vocabulary and sound like they've been saying them all their lives. It's funny--I try to be expansive and free in my use of language, but I guess I do set certain boundaries up for myself. Maybe they'll come tumbling down and I'll end up cursing like a sailor some day. We'll see. I used to cry whenever I talked about body issues, and now I can talk happily about body stuff to large rooms of people (that, too, is a surprise; when I was a rarely-raise-her-hand-in-class-because-I-was-too-shy girl, I never would have imagined that I'd feel comfortable talking to large rooms). I suppose anything can happen; life is always full of surprises...