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When Cursing Got Your Mouth Washed Out With Soap

pirate_girl

legendary ⚓
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http://www.irememberjfk.com/mt/2010/08/when_cursing_got_your_mouth_wa.php#more


One of the most obvious differences between the present day and the world we Boomer kids grew up in is the amount of naughty words flying through the air. What would our grandparents think if they heard modern-day conversations at the shopping mall? Anyone who watches network television is now subjected to a number of George Carlin's famous Seven Deadly Words on a regular basis. Shocking stuff to someone who might have just time-traveled here from 1965.

Profanity, I discovered, has a very interesting history. Taboo words have been largely generational. Thus, thumbing one's nose is nowadays considered a childish insult. But go back a hundred and fifty years, and "cocking a snook," as it was then known, was as obscene as the modern-day one-fingered salute.

The scatological S-word has taken the opposite track. Once, it was as proper to use as, say, the term "feces." But somewhere along the line, it gained a reputation for vulgarity.
One thing's for sure, though. Words and expressions that were sternly forbidden by society in general, our parents in particular, are now quite commonplace, for better or, mostly, worse.
But other pendulums swing in opposite directions. Take ethnic terms, for instance.
1960's Miami, Oklahoma was ethnically diverse, to a degree. The degree consisted of two races: white, and Native American. Of course, back then, the latter race was "Indian." But nowadays, that word has taken on some tarnish. Thus, you don't hear it as much as back then.
We kids also grew up using the infamous "N" word with great innocence and lack of ill will. We used it as a playful insult, the kind of name you'd call a friend in jest. If you were really mad at someone, the N word would NOT be in the arsenal of insults you would fling at them.
Perhaps the absence of blacks in 1960's northwest Oklahoma is why we used the word so freely. I would never dare utter it during trips to Tulsa, as we knew that it was indeed a strong insult when used on those whose family histories include slavery.
But at the schoolyard, one of the favorite tricks to play on gullible friends was to say "Guess what?" "What?" "you're a N- and I'm not!"


rhett_butler.jpg

Nowadays, that expression, when used by anyone other than a black person, carries the same social stigma, or perhaps one even stronger, as that of the classic F word.
The whole lightening up of the on-air use of salty language has to be traced back to Rhett Butler's famous adiós statement to Scarlett O'Hara. The rumor has long been that David Selznick was fined $5,000 for putting the word "damn" in the film.

However, the fact is that the Motion Picture Association board passed an amendment to the Production Code on November 1, 1939, to insure that Selznick would be in compliance with the code. The amendment allowed the use of two words, hell and damn, as long as their use was occasional and necessary to the storyline. The first hurdle had been removed.
It didn't take long for those two words to be used more than occasionally. Profanity steadily increased throughout the 40's and 50's. In 1966, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was released with an M rating, suggesting the film should only be viewed by mature audiences, due to its use of of the "GD" combination. The next year, the F-bomb made one of its earliest appearances in two British films, and the S word turned up in the American release In Cold Blood.

My own wake-up call came in 1973, when I saw Cops and Robbers. I was stunned to hear language that had only been heard behind the school woodshop in a film rated PG.
Television was quick to follow. G-D was one of the earliest harder curses to make it on the air, "son of a bitch" was close behind. I remember Alan Alda used that term in a 1979 MASH episode to great effect in insulting a South Korean officer who was transporting a female civilian to her execution.

Thus today, television profanity is either out in the open or else bleeped just barely, often the beginning and end of the word or phrase left audible.
shakespeare.gif


However, to bring all of this into perspective, perhaps we should look at the works of William Shakespeare.

The bawdy bard liberally sprinkled his works with words like Gadzooks, Zounds, God's bodkins, God's body, by God's mother, and most horrifying of all, "God's blessing on your beard." In Shakespeare's time, combining the use of God with a sarcastic reference to a man's beard was right up there with today's "M-F!"
In other words, Shakespeare's plays were largely of the R-rated variety, or at least PG13.

Obviously, there's a balance in there somewhere.
But by and large, many if not most Boomers fondly look back on a time when one used foul language at the risk of a mouthful of soap bubbles, and one was protected from such offensiveness on television and at the movie theater.
 
D

darroll

Guest
Myself and my brother could tell you what brands of soap tasted like.
 

Snowtrac Nome

member formerly known as dds
GOLD Site Supporter
funny you mentioned the n word out in bush alaska its still used freely to describe the high spots on the tundra th tree hugger crowd calls them tussucks and hummoks all natives you talk to from the bush will call them nword heads and and haave never heard the word hummok or tussock in ane native launguages i have studdied.
 

SShepherd

New member
funny you mentioned the n word out in bush alaska its still used freely to describe the high spots on the tundra th tree hugger crowd calls them tussucks and hummoks all natives you talk to from the bush will call them nword heads and and haave never heard the word hummok or tussock in ane native launguages i have studdied.
odd you say that. Guys here that do concrete call the big chunks that roll out of the cement mixer "n-heads":unsure:

Oh, and the first time I got my mouth crammed with a bar of soap was after I herd my dad...
this is how it went:

mom-"when are we leaving?" dad-" In a minute, I gotta take a shit"me- ya, dads gotta take a shit!"






I rememer it was a new bar of safegaurd, and it made my teeth very slippery:doh:
 

muleman

Gone But Not Forgotten
GOLD Site Supporter
Mom's palmolive was mild compared to grandma's home made lye soap. And you had to wait till she said you could rinse your mouth.
 

JEV

Mr. Congeniality
GOLD Site Supporter
Mom used Fels Naptha. She bought it by the case for us 5 boys.:yum:
 

pirate_girl

legendary ⚓
GOLD Site Supporter
I don't recall soap in the mouth.. just a nice slap across the face (that burned for hours) and sent to my room to kneel, rosary in hand.
Ahh yes, the good old days! LOL
 

tsaw

New member
GOLD Site Supporter
I got the soap in the mouth too. I also have a faint memory of swearing and cussing when company were over... and everyone laughed. I thought I was a comedian... but after company left.. I was blowing bubbles:hammer:
 

EastTexFrank

Well-known member
GOLD Site Supporter
Nope. Never Had the soap treatment. I did get the "occasional" clip on the ear though. Even to this day I lapse back into what my wife calls my "Oilfield English". But then again, I did learn from a master. When I was in my teens I worked with a guy who was, without a doubt, the best or worst curser that I have ever run across. Every profanity began with "Jesus" and ended with "Christ" and you tell how mad he was by the number of swear words inserted between the two. When he just mildly pissed off there would just be a couple but when he went ballistic he could fit about twenty cuss words in there, some of which I have never heard used by anybody else to this day. In fact I'm not even sure they were cuss words but the way he said them left no doubt that they should be.

Why did this thread make me recall that. I haven't even thought of that guy in 40 years.
 

Glink

Active member
Site Supporter
My mom always tells how when I was a toddler she would hear me practicing my cussing while under my bed.

Was OK as long as I kept it there. When it slipped out otherwise it was the Zest.
 

Snowtrac Nome

member formerly known as dds
GOLD Site Supporter
My mom always tells how when I was a toddler she would hear me practicing my cussing while under my bed.

Was OK as long as I kept it there. When it slipped out otherwise it was the Zest.
on this suject my youngest who you all have seen helping me rebuild my snow trac comes in on the weekends alot with me to help his dad out and he is a big boy now he went streight from diapers to peeing standing up, with one minor glitch he pee'd oon mom's tire just like the dog took for ever to break him of that. te funnyest was one day he was at the shop with me sitting in the door he was about 3 and was playing with one of his trucks and i was working on mom's ford so a few bad words were being used both because i was not getting paied and it was a ford well we were talking away when we noticed tim with one of my screw drivers working on his truck and next thing you know the words son of a bitch came out of his mouth mom pert near washed my mouth out.
 

Glink

Active member
Site Supporter
on this suject my youngest who you all have seen helping me rebuild my snow trac comes in on the weekends alot with me to help his dad out and he is a big boy now he went streight from diapers to peeing standing up, with one minor glitch he pee'd oon mom's tire just like the dog took for ever to break him of that. te funnyest was one day he was at the shop with me sitting in the door he was about 3 and was playing with one of his trucks and i was working on mom's ford so a few bad words were being used both because i was not getting paied and it was a ford well we were talking away when we noticed tim with one of my screw drivers working on his truck and next thing you know the words son of a bitch came out of his mouth mom pert near washed my mouth out.

OK I will go you one better. I was off on a hunting trip or somewhere, hell I travel way too much; and the wife and son were at her folks along with her paternal grandmother, having dinner. ( all these folks are great people, but they would not say shit if they had a mouthfull) The boy was probably 3 or 4 or so. Well evidently he wanted a few more mashed potatoes. So he politely asked his great grandmother if she would please pass those fu*&ing tater's.

Very cold around the house for several days when I got home after that.
 

nixon

Boned
GOLD Site Supporter
Never got the soap treatment ,or even a Thwackk. What I got was "nice ! we're so glad that You can express Yourself so clearly " The sarcasm was much more hurtful than a physical thwack . So ,after that I really gave a shit about the dickheads that I swore around . :whistling::whistling::whistling::yum:
 

lilnixon

AKA LILVIXEN
GOLD Site Supporter
Never got the soap treatment ,or even a Thwackk. What I got was "nice ! we're so glad that You can express Yourself so clearly " The sarcasm was much more hurtful than a physical thwack . So ,after that I really gave a shit about the dickheads that I swore around . :whistling::whistling::whistling::yum:

Are you calling me a Dick head.....:hammer:
 
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