Stop Cursing...and Start Living!

By Joel Stein

I knew I needed help when I cursed in front of Donny Osmond. It was a tense moment in the interview--I asked him to defend his rock opera about Mormonism--and I panicked. It's not that I was intimidated by Osmond's fame so much as I knew he had been working out a lot for a Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat video. Plus, I didn't know if Mormons had any special powers, the way Scientologists have with lawsuits.

Since I moved to New York City, I've found myself cursing in front of people I don't know and then worrying about whether they were offended for the rest of the conversation. Strangely, when people curse in front of me, I find them cool and self-confident. Maybe cursing isn't the issue here.

Still, I was going to have to change. Earlier this month in Michigan, Timothy Boomer was convicted under an 1897 statute for swearing very loudly--as many as 70 times--in hearing distance of small children, after he fell out of his canoe. Also, last week a Michigan court reinstated charges against a guy named Paul Hancock for cursing at his neighbor, Sharon Carnal. If I were Jay Leno, I'd make a joke about their last names.

Realizing I had better address my problem before it landed me a nickel in the can, I scheduled an appointment with Jim O'Connor, the founder of the Cuss Control Academy. Professor O'Connor is taking a break from teaching his two-hour, $45 classes to finish a book, which includes an entire chapter on the S word. However, he agreed to tutor me individually. O'Connor said I could use substitute words as a crutch, but advised employing a more positive, invective-free attitude. He suggested using shoot as a sort of cussing patch for the first few weeks. Finding shoot too embarrassing, I decided to go with two Civil War-era favorites, dandisprat and mutton-thumper, both of which could have been included in Jefferson Davis' comedy routine, "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Whatever People Did Before Television." But in general, O'Connor says, such words aren't necessary. "If you wanted to say I saw the most fabulous f'-in' game, you don't need that other word. Fabulous is a good enough word." This fabulous game, I assumed, was some sort of figure-skating event. If fabulous was the alternative, I was sticking with cursing.

Perhaps O'Connor's best suggestion was to "pretend your sweet little grandmother is always next to you." Although this did stop me from cursing, it also meant eating dinner at 4 p.m. and telling myself I needed a haircut. Again, I preferred cursing.

As our class was ending, I asked Professor O'Connor a question I had long pondered: Was it O.K. to swear during sex, if done in an encouraging and loving way? "As long as your partner likes it, and if it's all part of the action, that's not a problem." I told him I meant when I was alone. That was an uncomfortable moment for both of us.

Fellow student Jonathan Rix, who calls himself a "recovering cursaholic," says O'Connor's school changed his life, although he didn't make any lifelong friends there. "The curse words used to come out through a filter, but now it's like I'm passing a kidney stone." I'm wondering if O'Connor can start a school for cutting out really unappealing metaphors.