I wasn’t raised by cursers.  Both my parents are highly educated wordsmiths who had little tolerance for crass language from their children.  With so many of us running rampant, it wasn’t uncommon to hear one or more of us 5 sisters calling each other out,

“You owe Ma five cents!”

multiple times a day.  To us the f-word was fart, because even bathroom humor was off limits, unless it was uttered in Serbian.  I’m guessing this was allowed because no one in our suburban Massachusetts town knew what we were saying anyway, or possibly because we were embracing our father’s heritage.  I managed to make it through my formative years relatively clean spoken, yet bilingual in all things poop-related.  But somewhere over the years, although I’m more than capable of expressing myself sans profanity,  I went a completely different way.  I can’t pinpoint exactly when or why I went from using $2 words to cursing like a sailor.  Maybe I was trying to ditch my wholesome image or perhaps I finally realized what a fun and creative outlet swearing can really be.  Also, the look of shock that registers on a person’s face when something particularly disgusting comes out of my sweet, smiling mouth is pretty amusing.  Maybe there’s an even more deep-seated reason I became a born again curser, but I’ll be damned if I know what the fart it is!

When I was pregnant with my first child, I had lots of time to pore over pregnancy and childbirth books.  I was hell bent on making all of the best choices for my brewing bundle of joy.  As my due date inched closer, I finally had to deal with the reality of my foul language simply because a world in which my perfect baby boy’s first word could be “Bitch” “Fuckface” “Asswipe” or “Shithead,” seemed so very wrong.  I was determined to clean up my act, until I went in to labor and all kinds of shit hit the fan.  I’m  fuzzy on the details of exactly what I did and said, and not because I was drugged, but because I was not under the influence of anything other than pure, unadulterated pain. When my son made his appearance, I’m pretty sure the first thing his delicate, seashell shaped ears heard was a string of obscenities coming from yours truly.  But when I held him in my arms, the little swearing gremlin that had overtaken my body and mouth quickly disappeared.  As CMB and I elatedly snuggled with and cooed over our new addition,  I overheard my midwife whisper to the attending nurse, “See, I told you that she’s really sweet and cute.”

Fourteen years and another kid later, I still struggle with only using respectable language on a daily basis. I want to be a good role model to my kids and don’t want them to think swearing is cool.  I’m usually pretty good until some shitty asshole cuts me off when driving.  Or when some motherfucker tries to mess with one of my kids.  Or when I’m running hills.  Then all bets are off and my potty mouth goes on hyper speed. Just ask my friend, TPM, who had the distinct pleasure of logging many miles with me and my toilet tongue last weekend.  The two of us are running a particularly hilly half marathon next month, and thought it would be a grand idea to get a preview of coming attractions and tackle some of the terrain pre-race day.  I also think it’s important to highlight the fact that the day we had scheduled for our tough 10-miler, ended up being the same morning that we (and thousands of other people in the Bay Area) were shaken awake by the earth at 3:20am.  Anyone who has been through an earthquake knows how unsettling they are, and this guy was pretty big,  a 6.1.  While our families were both lucky enough to not suffer any damage or injury, it was pretty difficult to get back to sleep once the earth regained stillness.

When my alarm sounded at 6am, I was groggy and grumpy but still dragged myself out of bed.  I quietly fumbled through my running clothes, so as not to disturb CMB, and less silently stumbled down the stairs for some coffee and food.  I was so out of it that I guzzled 2 cups of coffee (twice my legal limit) and had a hard time forcing down anything other than a Kind bar (very unusual for the eating machine I normally am).  TPM and I met up in town and made the drive north to Petaluma together, all the while lamenting our lost sleep.  We parked about 1 1/2 miles in to the race course with plans to run the remaining 5 miles out and back.  We set out, with map in Spibelt, steadily climbing the first of many hills along the way.  Once we got warmed up and settled in to a comfortable pace, the run was surprisingly doable and really serene.  The route took us through Petaluma farm land, so off the beaten path that initially we encountered zero cars or cyclists, only a handful of runners out early in the morning with the same bright idea.

 

We talked and laughed and grew quiet when ascending and talked and laughed and were speechless at the hills (but never stopped to walk) and so on for miles.  When we finally reached the half marathon course turn around point, we had logged 5 of the most challenging miles ever but were in pretty fabulous spirits considering.  We headed back at a decent clip and even felt compelled to stop and take a picture of what we were about to ascend next, chuckling about how ridiculous it was.

Yes, we climbed that shit and a whole lot more.  Once again, the details are kind of hazy but I think we even felt so good that we started to joke about the possibility of missing our turn, until we realized that’s exactly what had happened.  We had breezily run a mile past, and way downhill of, the road we were supposed to take to get back to the car.  And that’s exactly the point I went from VJB, runner of hills, to VJB, runner of the mouth.  It was terrible, obscene and embarrassing to think about the things I was shouting at the poor, defenseless farm animals we passed once we finally turned around.  And the barking dogs.  Don’t even get me started on the cussing I did at them.  It’s a good thing that TPM and I are such good friends (and that she’s run hills with me before) because she did not seem phased or bothered by my uncontrollable need to spew profanities.  When we reached the car 12 miles later I had hit the wall in a big way.  My water bottle was empty , I was long past depleted of fuel, and totally out of sorts.  The cursing most likely would have continued on the ride home had I not kept my mouth closed to keep the building bile from spilling all over TPM’s pristine BMW.  And want to know the fucking craziest part?  We’re going to do that shit again this weekend!

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