Four-Letter Words

Do you ever reach that place where you only have two options—chew someone out or stop talking to people entirely?

I reached that point yesterday.

You’re just mad at everyone and everything.

Most people would just be able to swear and be OK. But here’s my problem: I’m not good at cursing.

It’s an art form for Southerners, being able to drop a swear word in the middle of a sentence and not have it sound unladylike. You know how when Scarlet would call them (blank) Yankees. It’s not so bad then, just a little stress relief.

But I never get it right. I never use the right word in the right situations. I try extremely hard to not swear in the first place—and I usually don’t in public. I just do it in my head. But it doesn’t make me feel better when it doesn’t sound right. 

I probably shouldn’t even be cursing in my head.

What makes it worse is that I dream-swear. In almost every single one of my dreams, I swear like a sailor. Repressed behaviors much? I asked a about that one time because I couldn’t make it stop (and I was saying some pretty bad dream words) but he said not to worry.

That’s probably the moral of this whole story, but sometimes things just happen.

Traffic gets backed up in the Target parking lot.

The car in front of you on Hickory Road slams on its breaks in the rain.

This time of year is stressful. I know you’re stressed. I am, too. It’s tough around Christmas with the expectations of magic even when magic doesn’t exist.

That’s tough.

So if you’re out there and you just want to yell and scream at someone, you can email me. I’ll understand that it’s just the “chain of screaming,” for all you How I Met Your Mother fans out there.