I’m stepping off a cliff into vulnerability without a parachute here but I confess that I actually posted a profile on a singles site today. Not just any singles site though – it’s Green Singles. Somehow the greenness of it makes it seem a step above desperate. I admit to a little anxiety and occasional delusions of grandeur but I’m definitely not desperate, not yet anyway.
So here I was searching for beautiful men like you pan for gold. Take a look at match.com sometime and you’ll find that it looks like all the men over 50 in Vermont have eyeglasses from the 70s, beards, flannel shirts, and suspenders. I’m sure I just pissed some people off so let me back off that a little bit and say that there is a greater percentage of backwoodsmen in Vermont than in say Boston or Austin. The rest of you guys are absolutely the answer to a woman’s prayers so I’m not talking about you, okay.
I put my profile up, edited it a dozen times, and then, drumroll please, I actually sent a smile to cute artist guy. Notice that at Green Singles it’s a smile instead of the crass wink at match.com. So a couple of hours go by and low-and-behold cute artist guy sends me an email and he even points out the superiority of southern women. I mean is this guy perfect or what? Well, I guess he could just be really smart and looking to win over a Texas girl but I’m choosing to believe he’s perfect. Aren’t they all when you’re just emailing. It’s actually getting to know each other that kills a relationship.
Now I don’t want to stomp on my readers’ feelings by saying that southern women are better or cuter or smarter than Vermont women, that just wouldn’t be true – however I can emphatically say that Texas women are more bawdy. I just love that word and no one uses it anymore. Bawdy, bawdy, bawdy – there’s just no other word for that kind of woman.
As I told cute artist guy, when I’m in Texas I get lighter. My language becomes saltier, I laugh louder, my humor is more irreverent, and I drink way more margaritas. I can’t absolutely swear that I cuss more because I’m in Texas – I mean it could be the margaritas but sometimes the words just explode from my lips like they’ve been bottled up for months, which they have, because I live in – Vermont!
I learned to cuss from my mom. New England women probably can’t make that claim but most Texas gals say it with pride. Mom does have her standards – I mean you’ll never hear fuck come out of her mouth but she does smile admiringly at me when I say it. She has her own favorites of course – damn, hellfire, bastard. To her George Bush is and always will be that ole bastard. Her absolute best cuss word that she says better than every other person in the universe is shit. Now you have to remember that we’re Texas women so when mom says shit it becomes four syllables. Well shiiiit.
I do a pretty good job with shit myself as do my daughters. It’s a family trait that, don’t snicker, we keep handing down mother to daughter. Every mom passes things down to her daughter – the family silver, grandmother’s crystal, great aunt Bertha’s hideous laugh – in my family it just happens to be shit.
So it’s been a great day. I posted my profile on a dating site, actually found a cute artist guy, sent him an email and he sent one back, bragged about Texas women, and revealed that my family inheritance is shit. You can’t get much better than that.
*Shange, Ntozake, Sassafrass, Cyprus, and Indigo: A Novel, 1982
What, the family silver!? Shit, no one ever told me about that! I was happy with shit. I love shit. And I especially LOVE hearing it come from my mom’s and grandmother’s mouths. While my sisters and I have great shit, the two senior women in the family are indeed what we aspire to be. And, that grandmother of ours… she does have the best shiiit in the world (and makes the best pot of pinto beans, too)! Now, they are THE shit!
OK Mom, we need to have a chat about that silver. And who the hell is Aunt Bertha? Wholly Shit!
Thanks for teaching me to say shit so early in life!
Swearing as a response to pain
NeuroReport: 5 August 2009 – Volume 20 – Issue 12 – pp 1056-1060
by Stephens, Richard; Atkins, John; Kingston, Andrew
Although a common pain response, whether swearing alters individuals’ experience of pain has not been investigated. This study investigated whether swearing affects cold-pressor pain tolerance (the ability to withstand immersing the hand in icy water), pain perception and heart rate. In a repeated measures design, pain outcomes were assessed in participants asked to repeat a swear word versus a neutral word. In addition, sex differences and the roles of pain catastrophising, fear of pain and trait anxiety were explored. Swearing increased pain tolerance, increased heart rate and decreased perceived pain compared with not swearing. However, swearing did not increase pain tolerance in males with a tendency to catastrophise. The observed pain-lessening (hypoalgesic) effect may occur because swearing induces a fight-or-flight response and nullifies the link between fear of pain and pain perception.
I KNEW it was good for me!