I probably used my first swear word in front of my parents when I was 5 years old. I remember it being somewhere around that time. As Sheriff officers, my parents were constantly around criminals and criminal language. I think they tried for a while to not bring the language home but oh my goodness did they fail miserably. I remember recognizing that the words that they used were "bad" and that I shouldn't repeat them out loud or I would get in trouble but very quickly it became so commonly heard in my house that swear words would pop up in my every day thoughts. I never uttered the words at school and at the time I didn't use them in front of my parents but I would say them in my room when no one could hear me. Then one day I tripped down the stairs and under my breath said, "shit". My father was home when it happened and he heard me say it. He looked at me and asked if I said what he thought I said. I was usually TERRIFIED of getting in trouble with my parents (I still totally am; to this day if my mom started to yell at me I think I'd hand her a blunt object and just ask her to beat the crap out of me instead) but for some reason in this moment I possessed an unnatural amount of courage and I nodded my head, a bold move, I know. As if on cue, my mother came home and my father said, "Do you know what your daughter said?" and they went off on a little conversation about how I had just used a swear word, blah blah blah. My mother, God bless her, just shrugged her shoulders and said, "Eh, we taught it to her" and went on her merry way. She's always been the best at picking her battles. It was a strange taste of freedom that I experienced in that moment and I remember kind of beaming with happiness. For a few years I tried not to waste the words, I'd use them mostly when I was angry or when I tripped (which, if you know me, happens about 50 times a day), but sparingly, as if to slowly prepare my parents for the deluge of shit-talking that would come once I moved out of the house.
I hit "fuck it all" status when I was in high school. I was a good student, never got into any trouble and was a total 100% dork. My cool points were NONEXISTENT. I had nothing to lose so I stopped caring. It was then that I developed the taste for using horrible language whenever I wanted to and speaking my mind. I learned very quickly that I am EXTREMELY opinionated but my parents always very much supported my desire to speak my mind and I rarely, if ever, dealt with the consequences of being a total fucking asshole...until I applied to go to college.
My parents made a deal with me when I was in high school - if I went to junior college for 2 years I could go wherever I wanted and they would pay for it. I knew it was a great deal but I was also very smart and I didn't want to be in junior college for two years so I just completed two years of school in one and maxed out the credit hours that I could earn so it no longer made sense for me to wait another year. I visited several schools and eventually decided that I wanted to go to school at Pepperdine. I took an application and started filling it out...
My parents are definitely not stupid, but they didn't really have any helpful advice for me when it came to applying for college. They really hadn't been able to help me in school past middle school when I "accidentally" got put in classes with the smart kids, which is another story for another time. You'd think filling out a college application would be a simple task but I somehow managed to royally fuck it up. I was fine with all the check the box, one word responses, but then came the stupid fucking essays and that's where I decided to shine and convey to Pepperdine that I was a total piece of shit. The harmless essay that did me in went a little something like this: Please describe any charity or volunteer work that you have done. Not complicated, right? WRONG!
I've done plenty of charitable work in my time, actually writing out my activities wasn't the problem. My problem was that I was an idealistic non-conformist, piece of...sh...awesome actually. I'm actually sort of proud of this moment, even though it ended up being a total pain in the ass. Here's my problem - I do volunteer work out of the goodness of my heart and I never did it to make my college essays look pretty. I have a problem with a college asking for volunteer work as a qualification to get into college. If it's required to get into college it's no longer volunteer work; you are doing it because you have to do it. At this point in my logic someone should have hit me over the head with a 2 x 4 and given me a stern talking to when I woke up but I didn't let anyone read my essays so my actions went unnoticed, at least for the time being. I chose to speak my mind and write what I described above instead of making the process simple and describing my charitable activities. I finished the rest of my application and mailed it in, very pleased that I honestly put myself out there in my application...
And it turns out Pepperdine didn't give a shit about that sentiment AT ALL. They gave me a nice FUCK YOU REJECTION LETTER! A REJECTION LETTER! I graduated at the very top of my class at Pepperdine, ended up getting a partial academic scholarship to the damn school AND THEY REJECTED FUCKING FLAT OUT REJECTED ME THE FIRST ROUND. Turns out they really didn't care about my thoughts on volunteer work, who knew? I ended up getting really pissed off and going to Cal State Long Beach for a semester, doing more volunteer work SPECIFICALLY to please the damn school and then sucking up to every Pepperdine official that I possibly could. I had to reapply and write a conformist stupid bullshit essay that looked pretty and made everyone happy. It was the first time I learned that perhaps maybe sometimes I should shut my fucking mouth...
...and then I spent the last 10 years clearly undoing every bit of that life lesson.
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