These Words Don't Suck

Every kid knew there were certain words you just couldn’t say. George Carlin famously called these the 7 Words You Can Never Say on Television, or just The 7 Words for short:

Those words were mostly off-limits to all the middle school kids I knew. We certainly couldn’t say them in school or anywhere around our parents, and you didn’t hear any of them on broadcast television.

I remember our bus driver pulling over once all the kids were on the bus to share just how upset she was with us. This was really something: here was a fully grown person losing their shit in front of a bunch of kids. Apparently, Desiree felt betrayed that someone had ratted her out for swearing on the bus.

She pointed out that the only curse words she ever used around us were damn, shit, and hell. Although I had heard plenty of adults on television saying those things, and every single middle school kid knew all seven of Carlin’s words by heart anyway, this was the first time I had ever heard any adult utter those three words in such close proximity.

Desiree pointed out that she didn’t use emm effer around us, or eff you, or gee-dee emm effer, or anything so extreme—only damn, shit, and hell. She didn’t spell out all seven of the words, but she came close as hell.

Desiree’s lecture notwithstanding, I was not allowed to say damn, shit, or hell in my house. In fact, I was forbidden from even more words, all of which I naturally rebelled against.

One of those words was suck. In isolation, suck is a perfectly normal word kids learn almost immediately. After all, it has a lot to do with early eating, before chewing and mastication take over your consumption process. Vacuum cleaners suck, too.

In fact, it’s a vacuum cleaner gag that triggered this memory in me today. Remember Wayne’s World?

This memorable scene involves a product demo for the Suck-Kut, a parody of a real device someone invented that puts together a vacuum cleaner and sharp blades designed to cut hair.

The product salesperson repeats the tagline “it sucks as it cuts” several times during the demo, but things go horribly wrong while he’s trying to cut Garth’s hair in real time. Instead of a little trim, Garth’s hair seems to be crudely yanked into the apparatus, causing discomfort and mistrust in an instant.

Garth’s pithy response is perfect:

It certainly does suck!

Wayne adds in, “…as it cuts” to close the loop on the joke.

This scene perfectly illustrates why I rebelled against this linguistic restriction. I couldn’t say something like this sucks around my folks, and yet: there was a perfectly legitimate use of that same word, applied to describe what a vacuum cleaner does. This word wasn’t like the seven words you really couldn’t ever say, but more about the context.

Ultimately, Tim and I laughed off Desiree’s speech and got on with our day, playing football or D&D or Ivan Stewart’s Off-Road on the NES.

Still, this was… well, weird. An adult had just tried to convince us she was one of us, and I really think Desiree felt more kinship with us kids than with the adult administrators who told her what to do. Hearing a slew of cursing from a person in a position of authority was educational, to say the least, and seeing how hurt our bus driver was by a kid tattling wasn’t something I expected to see.

Were there any oddly forbidden words for you as a kid—stuff your friends could say but you could not? What words were off-limits in your home?