Words like f@#&*, sh^t, p!ss and oh dear, that was quite painful...

Swear to your hearts content.



At least while you're in pain.



That's what researchers have found whilst investigating whether cusswords relieve pain - which, apparently - they do.



Apart from profanity being useful when that hammer misses, when that big toe throbs or when females try to squeeze a watermelon out of an opening the size of a lemon, it's also a versatile and adaptable ingredient in the vast, messy kitchen of life.



The expletive vocabulary of my eleven year old son is impressive (see blog "Eleven"), written in his barely legible, slanted cursive writing one night on a lined bit of paper.



What was he angry about?



And more importantly, what, in no uncertain terms, is a hobosexual??????????????



I do remember the first time I used the word cunt.



It was in high school when I was twelve or thirteen, heard at first from the lips of another girl my age.



Wendy, a girl in my group had an older boyfriend.



Apparently he liked to have sex and quite often too but she was also from a family of nine with some older sisters and brothers.



An excellent candidate for vulgarity.



So when a boy yanked the edge of my folder hard, sending it flying out of my left hand and all of my papers with it the word just, well, slipped out...



The shocked look on the face of the nearby teacher and her stern warning didn't register at the time.



I simply thought it was a deliciously uber cool word at the time, only vaguely aware of it's full and implicit meaning.



Really though, it wasn't nearly as creative as the wonderfully inventive words I heard when I was in Croatia on my European holiday and heard a woman cursing her huband who meekly tried to defend himself and his stint at the local pub.



Go to a woman's private bits times three she screamed at him.



Women and their most pivate, intimate body part are noticeably prominent in the naughty words of the people of the Balkans.



God gets quite a workout as well.



Cursing is nothing, if not adaptable.



But a word of warning...



Beware of the guilt, depression and fear, all symptoms of mental pain with swear words that have turned ferally inwards and have doggedly set their sights upon your good self with a blinding gusto like....


bitch
asshole
dickhead
fuckwit....


for that handy ingredient just went and spoilt the whole concoction.