Momma's Quarter Jar

I've been too busy to write much lately. A typesetter friend of mine has been overworked and she wrote me, "Even my fingers are tired." But if you write yourself, you know how even if you can't find time to write, topics bubble up during your day: the lunar eclipse makes you think of the first time you felt people may be watching down on you from another world; the "Norm '08" bumper sticker you saw and the dinner conversations you imagine at that house; and this section from John Gardner's guide for novelists:

"Like other kinds of intelligence, the storyteller's is partly natural, partly trained. It is composed of several qualities: wit (a tendency to make irreverent connections); obstinancy and tendency toward churlishness (a refusal to believe what all sensible people know is true) ; childishness . . . ; a marked tendency toward oral or anal fixation or both . . . ; a strange admixture of shameless playfulness and embarassing earnestness . . . ; patience like a cat's; a criminal streak of cunning; psychological instbility; recklessness. . . ."

Gardner's list goes on. And we wonder: how does he know our extended families so well?

The practice of swearing has come up in my thoughts, and I don't mean so much in the way a Presbyterian pastor ponders about how to address the problem in his Sunday sermon, but that I've been thinking about my doing too much of it lately. And then it--swearing; a certain four-letter word, that is--has made the headlines with the restaging of Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." Instead of using the work "f***ing," the earlier staged versions used the euphemisms "ducking" and "rutting."

My daughter came by to visit us and shared some good stories about the first- and second-graders she tutors at an inner-city charter school, a job she has with the America Reads program. Last week they celebrated their 100th day of learning by bringing in 100 multicolored balloons filled with air and letting the kids jump on and pop all the balloons before class. My daughter has a short video of the glee on her cell phone.

The kids have many behavioral problems and psychological issues but the staff is committed to mediation and self-awareness. There is a "peace rug" out in the hall and if two students get into it, they first have to go try to work it out on the peace rug. One bubbly but rambunctious kid sometimes gets himself so worked up that he raises his hand and shouts out, "I need a break, need a break. I'm sending my own self for a break on the peace rug."

And after a discussion about being good, one second-grader said to my daughter, "You should see my mom's quarter jar. It's already half-full and it's a big jar." She said it was her mom's cussing jar and did her mom ever swear a lot.

If I kept a quarter jar these past weeks we'd all have a heyday at the arcades. Last week, when it got so cold that the streets were coated with that black ice, my son and I were heading down Highland Parkway going about twenty when a woman in front of us started backing down the middle of the street. I was so surprised by her white tail lights that it didn't quite register I was about to hit her. She was completely oblivious that she was on a city street and here we were heading right for her back end. I slammed on my brakes and the anti-lock mechanism ground round and round and we kept skidding ahead and because I was worried about us and ticked off at this oblivious driver and thinking how I don't need to deal with a car accident right now I let out with "Fuck!" (That word--a first from me in front of my son.) And then the driver put on her brakes and we came to a stop about two feet behind her. When I looked over at my son he wasn't looking at the near-miss at all but over at me. With that look that is a mix of surprise and clear disappointment.

I remember when my dad first said that word. He had been swearing in front of me for years, but mostly just the drawn-out, completely frustrated version of "Jeezus Kee-rist." But one day he was working under the hood of my brother's Chevy Nova and it was hot and the engine had been acting up and my dad was always cracking his tender, balding head on something--the chandelier, the bottom edge of the corner cupboard. And so this day he went to straighten up and must have forgot his head was under the propped hood and he cracked that bald head again. And there it came. One loud, "F***!" He didn't even look over at me but I knew he was embarassed I had heard.

And I remember the talk of my neighborhood on an air base in Oklahoma, when the little four-year-old came out with a phrase everyone was sure he had picked up from his parents. Someone had souped up an old car and was showing off its style, its speed, up and down the street. The moms were worried--would this be a regular disturbance? The dads were fairly impressed--that car could go fast and loud. And then the owner did a fast sprint on the road behind the houses and that tow-headed four-year-old, who had been watching from his dining room window, came running out pointing, and said, "Look at that little mother fucker go."

Once when my daughter was five and in her pious stage, and my husband was on the road a lot, I went in to her daycare for the nightly pick-up. Someone was out casing cars and saw mine--and that I had left my briefcase in the front seat. When we came out, my passenger window had been shattered and my briefcase with all my money and ID were stolen. It was very frightening for us. I know I swore mildly under my breath. When we got home I realized they had also taken my house key, which was on a different chain and in the pocket of my purse, so then I worried about them breaking into our home, too. The next day, when we were getting gas at SuperAmerica, our window fixed up with Saran Wrap and packing tape, the car in front of us took off without paying. The store clerks came running out threatening and shaking their fists at the air. I turned to my young daughter and said, "I'm sorry you've had to see all these terrible things this weekend." She looked at me and said, "That's okay, Mommy. But what's really bad for me is that you swore three times this weekend. I counted" And she looked at me accusingly.

So it's very funny that I also ran across this short video of an interview with George Clooney. Because in it he describes how as a kid he was sure he was going to break out with that certain four-letter word in his father's newsroom, with all the world watching. I swear--no really, I do--that I'm going to do the same thing sometime at the most inappropriate moments: job interviews, my kids' band concerts. . . . I better watch it. Maybe I'll get my own quarter jar.