To the best of my knowledge, I have sworn only three times out loud, and only once is it possible I meant it. The first time I was three. Mom was having a really bad day. It was raining, and she had several appointments. When she went to pick the dry cleaning up and stepped outside, it dropped and fell in the mud. She said something she probably shouldn't have, and I said, "Mommy, why you say 'Oh, shit'?"
The second time, Jenny-my-sister and I were working on a jigsaw puzzle, and Mom was knitting a sweater for herself. She dropped a stitch, and a whole line came unraveled. She swore.
"What did you say?" asked Jenny.
"Shit," I answered for Mom without thinking. Then I clapped my hands over my mouth in horror. They both laughed. "How could you?" I demanded indignantly, and then went to wash my mouth out with soap. It tasted terrible. I decided I probably shouldn't have bothered, and wouldn't have if I hadn't read so many books with that sort of thing happening in them. Jenny teased me about it for a week.
The third time, it was entirely my fault. We were at the supper table. Dad was still teaching. I asked Mom and Jenny what they'd do if the house caught fire, just to get them to ask me, but I hadn't decided what I'd say when they did.
"What would you do, Amy?" asked Jenny.
I said the first words that popped to my mouth. "I'd grab the mouse cage and get the heck across the street." Then I clapped my hands over my mouth in horror. They both laughed at me. "May I be excused?" I asked, ever so politely.
"Why?" asked Mom.
"I want to rinse my mouth out." I wasn't going to try soap again.
"Here." Mom handed me her wine glass.
Well, alcohol did kill germs, so I took a big swig. Then I choked. My throat burned, my eyes watered, and my tongue swelled. Mom laughed again.
"Amy, you're not supposed to drink wine that fast!" she said.
You're telling me, I thought, grabbing for my milk.
Mom and Jenny laughed at my haste, and I glared at them. My mother and my sister were laughing at me, and Dad wasn't home, although he would probably laughed at me, too, having a much more thorough sense of humor than either of my immediate female relatives. My glaring did not stifle their laughter, although I believe that neither did it encourage further mirth. "Ma mère, ma sœur," I stated flatly, "excusez-moi." I folded my napkin into a triangle, stood up, and left the room. I didn't bother to push my chair in.
In my bedroom, I sat on my bed, seized a book from the nearest of my bookshelves, and buried my nose in it, trying to erase the memory from my mind with a plot. To blot out the feeling of ostracism, the laughter, the taste, the words. A self-imposed ostracism, just swirling in my mind, yet distressing all the same. Eternally desiring to avoid humanity, to taunt and tease humanity, to drive them crazy because I was so crazy that no one would ever be able to do anything about it, not in my lifetime.
The book I had grabbed was an anthology of Greek myths, and I found myself studying the trickster, the abnormalities an immortal could get away with, especially an immoral one. Hermes laughed a lot. I tried it out. Laughing at my own success. I hunted up a book of comedy and tried laughing at everything that I judged even remotely amusing. It got easier.
Mom knocked on my door. "Amy, what is that ruckus you're making?" she demanded.
I opened the door. "Ma mère, laisse-moi tranquille. Tu n'as pas le droit de me silencer." I saw the confused expression on her face, and I laughed and laughed. I read and laughed. I noticed that, even in books, people liked to use words to express strong feelings, so I invented my own curses and laughed at them.
Comment to encourage me to write more!