The Curse of Big Al

I was watching Bob Saget on HBO the other night and he was cursing a lot in his act. His act seemed to hinge on his cursing a lot. I guess so people will know that ‘Full House’ and ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos’ wasn’t the real Bob Saget. Denis Leary on the other hand seems to use cursing as a first language. He uses cursing almost like punctuation. In fact if he didn’t drop the ‘F’ bomb into almost every sentence I’m not sure we would even understand what he was saying.

Potty mouths run in my family. I truly try not to use vulgarities when speaking in public, but sometimes a situation just calls for it.
At home however when confronted with a frustrating moment, a string of horrible words can come streaming out. It’s not that the words have never been heard before, it’s the way I might use them. The wrong people will have the wrong parts shoved up the wrong orifices. Peoples parents will be of questionable lineage species-wise. Where did I learn this? Well like in ‘A Christmas Story’ it wasn’t from some kid I hung out with fifty years ago. No I heard it every day from my dad. He was a master at cursing. He cursed at us. He cursed at people in other cars. He cursed at inanimate objects. I assume he learned it from being in the military during WWII, because I never heard words like that from his mother.

Now my mother also cursed. Sometimes you would have thought the fleet had come into town and the sailors were in our house. My mom swore differently from my dad. She could let loose with a short string of goddamn this and sonofabitch that when she was angry with you, but this was understandable having to raise eleven children. The best was when she was truly frustrated. That’s when she would let loose with her patented "SHIT, SHIT , SHIT, SHIT , SHIT, SHIT , SHIT, SHIT , SHIT, SHIT , SHIT, SHIT , SHIT, SHIT , SHIT, SHIT ". When you heard that you either hid, ran, or were the target of her wrath in which case she would come after you with her ‘balloon stick’. It was probably better to get whipped with the balloon stick right then and there. If you managed to escape, the alternative was when dad came home and my mom would sic him and his magic belt on you. By magic I mean because it would come flying out of his belt loops at you faster than you could realize what was happening. This was the law of the land when we were growing up. If you fucked up, you got smacked. If you were good, things were nice and dad would do that turn into the Tastee Freeze and we’d all get nickle ice cream cones.

No my parents weren’t perfect but they had eleven kids to worry about. I’m sure if it weren’t for the fear of ‘Big Al’ I would have got into a lot more trouble as I grew up.