Sunday, April 26, 2009

Swearing is caring

As far as language goes, I like to keep it clean. However, that doesn't mean I don't enjoy a good swearing story every now and again. Here are two of my all-time favorites (both of which happened within the last week):

1. President Eyring spoke at the DC BYU Management Society Dinner last weekend. The former US Ambassador to Belgium --a good friend of Eyring's from college -- introduced President Eyring (keep in mind that this former ambassador is not a member of the LDS faith):

"To all of you Mormons in the audience: welcome brothers and sisters.
To all you Jews in the audience: shalom.
To all you Muslims in the audience: praise be to Allah.
To all the atheists in the audience: how the hell are ya?"

After a pause, the whole banquet hall erupted in laughter. I could hardly contain myself, here was a former ambassador, swearing loudly in front of the first counselor in the first presidency. You can't tell me that's not a good swear.

2. On my way home from work every night I walk through a courtyard in our neighborhood called "Kings Court." Every day there are two kids out playing in the grass and shaking the branches of the cherry trees to make the blossoms fall like snow around them.

On Friday, one of the kids --the girl, who I would suspect is about 7 or 8 years old --was riding her razor scooter up and down the sidewalk at a break-neck pace. I had to jump out of the way to avoid being hit (got my shoes all muddy, darn it!), and an older lady about 20 feet down had to jump out of the way as well.

I kept watching as this little girl hurled herself down the sidewalk as fast as she could go, until she jumped off the scooter, turned around looking proud of herself and exclaimed in her loud squeeky voice: "Damn!" (sounded like "day-um").

I laughed the rest of the way home and all through my re-telling to Blake.

Kids these days --I know they shouldn't swear, but is it horrible if I'm glad they sometimes do?

1 comment:

  1. I've officially decided that the H-bomb isn't a swear. There's just too many great usages for it to be prohibited.

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