Do you remember the liberation from the shackles of youth that you felt the first time you let rip with the F-bomb or daringly flipped your third finger? For me, I was around 13 (yes, I was a late-bloomer) and I waited until my mother turned to leave the room that she just ordered I hang up the phone and clean. There it was, rising from deep within me, the courage to boldly flip the bird in the direction of my mother's back. "Take that!" the gesture screamed. It didn't, of course, scream loudly enough for my mother or her back to actually hear it but it was a sufficiently momentous act of independence that it stayed with me for these many decades.
Now, with two kids of my own, I grapple with how big a deal things like that really are. Is it just a stage of growing up? Is tossing out a cuss word just an easy way to show the world you really aren't a baby anymore? Or is it an insidious slippery slope on which a child will fall head first into a life of drugs and crime unless you nip the first F-word in the butt?
Mind you, I don't like it when I hear kids use profanity. It doesn't bother me as much as when I see kids bully one another, but profanity rolling off the tongue of a 10-year-old still stings my ears and feels right up there with facial piercings and giant visible tattoos as things I hope my kids won't do. Others may consider self-inflicted body holes and skin stains as fashion statements and attach no greater symbolism to them, but for me, they remain the markings of drunken sailors and people who live in Arkansas trailer parks. Nobody who went to college when I did was tattooed unless they had just returned from Vietnam. And anyone my age who got tattooed later in life was generally having a mid-life crisis and couldn't afford a red Corvette.
Selective cursing though, that's different. A mom friend recently admitted she washed her 11-year-old son's mouth out with soap for calling her the b-word. "Where did he even learn it?" she asked incredulously. "Everywhere and anywhere," I told her.
And all of this, of course, brings us around to British singer M.I.A.'s half-time performance. I've been around Hollywood too long to believe that this year's version of the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction wasn't choreographed just as carefully as every other step in the production.
My kids were in the room during the Super Bowl half-time show. We all saw the singer flip the bird and in my living room, there wasn't so much as an acknowledgment. Someone asked if there was any more guacomole left and two people had left to go to the bathroom. But knowing that my kids will hear about it at school, I brought it up.
"Hey, that singer -- what's her name? -- just flipped the middle finger," I announced.
"M.I.A." the 14-year-old told me, "her name is M.I.A."
Was the point lost or the point taken?
My husband, hoping to bring the discussion back to proper use of our middle fingers, chimed in with reminding everyone how a speeding driver flipped us the bird because we were in his way as we hiked down our narrow canyon road.
"Yeah," said the 14-year-old, "I saw that dad." She returned to her book.
"You know we don't want you to do that right?" I followed up.
"Yep," came the reply, her nose still buried in "The Hunger Games."
We tried the little guy, our 11-year-old son.
"Simon," I began. I was cut off at the pass. "Yes Mom, we know."
Sorry M.I.A., but you shocked no one at our house. Can't say we liked what you did, but can say your intention failed miserably.