So when I was in first grade I asked my parents what "fuck" meant, and because my parents are very keen, enlightened types, they calmly explained that it was a vulgar term for intercourse. And because I was a geeky little kid, the next day on the playground I explained to all my geeky little kid friends that we could say "Intercourse you!" and "What the intercourse?!" and not get in trouble...at least not with other kids. (Yeah, that was me. Hi.)

Later, when I went beyond inquiry to an actual cursing stage, my parents calmly suggested that words like "fuck" lose their power if you use them too often, and then when you’re, say, really, really pissed off, you have nowhere to go, foul linguistically speaking. At the age of ten this made a lot of sense, and while I have since learned that there are, in fact, lots of places to go beyond "fuck", I still think their advice is generally sound. Observe:

When I first moved to Cambridge from Southern California, I had a roommate from Brooklyn who used the word "fuck" even more often then I used the word "like" (Me: He was, like, totally nuts. Roommate: Oh, yeah, he was totally fucking nuts.) After enough "You want some fucking toast? Fuck, we’re out of strawberry jam. How about fucking apricot?" you just stop hearing the word, so when he really had a point to make he had to resort to shouting and sputtering and arm waving, which I do believe is less impressive than the rarely delivered, ice-cold, simple "Fuck."

Why do I mention this? Because lately I’ve been tempted to make big fucking withdrawals from Bank of Profanity, that’s why.