I’m preparing my notes for a beginning writing class I’ll be teaching next month. I want to share Anne Lamott’s idea of writing really bad first drafts. She calls them sh*tty first drafts. Notice how I didn’t use the “s” word? Yeah, that’s what I decided to write about just now.

Not long ago, a friend told me, “I noticed that you never swear. Why is that?”

Wow. I hadn’t realized I didn’t swear. I’m not particularly prudish about swearing. Other people swearing doesn’t offend me. All I could say in response was, “Sometimes I do.” Or I think I do, anyway. I definitely think swear words. But maybe they don’t come out of my mouth. lol

It gave me food for thought. Had I always been a non-swearer? Was there a time when I stopped swearing? I didn’t know.

To the best of my knowledge, I think I stopped swearing when I became a mother. Setting a good example for the kiddos was a high priority to me. I was surrounded by kids. My own. My kids’ friends. The 4-H Club. The neighbors. Everyone came to my house to play because we had the biggest front yard and the best snacks.

Swearing just wasn’t an option for me with all those impressionable little people running around. And once the non-swearing habit was firmly set, it never became an option again.

So here I sit, a full-grown adult teaching a writing class who can’t type the word sh*tty. I wonder if I’ll be able to say it in the class? Probably not without a bunch of apologizes and excuses and embarrassment.

There’s something that amuses me in this situation. 😃