Oh shit

I think there was more of a difference in the way we spoke in a classroom and on the street than the presence of girls.  There were grammar differences.  We might well say we didn't  have no bananas on the street, but we would never say that in the classroom.

You know that double negative thing is odd.  Technically two negatives make a positive, like minus one times minus one equals positive one.  But everybody knows if you say you don't have no bananas it doesn't mean that you actually have bananas.  But if you put it in nice grammar, like, "It isn't true that we have no bananas," why then it does sound like you have bananas.

I wanted to talk about grammar, but maybe young Beagles didn't use no slang, since he was, as he has said, more like a little adult than a kid. I think Beagles is talking more about swearing than he is about grammar.

It's hard to remember when we first realized that there was such a thing as swearing.  There is the trope in sitcoms where the very young child learns a swear word and then uses it all the time because it has an effect on the adults.  Of course the kid is absolutely right, a word is just a combination of sounds and there is absolutely no reason why one combination should be considered fine and another will send you down the escalator to H E Double hockeysticks.

But some things are wrong, just because everybody thinks they are wrong, and that was especially true for swear words,  Especially around the delicate sex, although I suspect anymore women swear about as much as men do.

But I remember maybe my second year in college, some girl called me up early in the morning and I was still sleepy and I was saying like we went to the fucking store and got some fucking cigarettes and,,,  And then I stopped dead in my tracks, realizing what I was saying and I started apologizing profusely.  A couple years later I was swearing profusely no matter who was around and if there were women they were swearing just as much.

That was my hippie days.  We hippies loved swearing, it shocked the squares and showed how free we were

I used to have to make a conscious effort when I was back in Chicago with my parents not to swear, but as my peak hippie behavior began to fade I didn't have to make much effort, and anymore I don't swear that much.  Not at all in formal situations around people I don't know, and more the less formal and the more familiar my company is.

But you know there is that moment sometimes, when you are about to say oh, shit, but then you realize maybe that is not fitting for present company, but then you say it anyway just to be a little daring, and it feels good.



On another subject last week I watched a NatGeo (I know Beagles is a fan of NatGeo) special on the great lakes.  It was pretty good, though why everything they put on tv has to be dumbed down is beyond me.  I was following along on Google Earth when they showed a river under the Mackinaw bridge.  Sometimes in the past the great lakes were connected only by rivers and sometimes not at all.

When I Google Earthed the Mackinaw bridge I noticed there were square patches of green in the water on either side of the Mackinaw bridge.  I wonder if Beagles knows anything about that.