I incurred an enormous profanity debt when I injured my back shoveling snow last December. In the weeks that followed, the litany of vulgarities that spilled forth was commensurate with the pain, which was acute. Most of the words were commonplace monosyllabic nouns and verbs with drawn-out soft-consonant sounds like fff or shhh at one end and hard exclamatory consonants such as k and t on the far side of the interceding vowel.
These epic soliloquies of offensive language continued when the usual prescription pain medications did little to dull the agony. By the time an MRI revealed two bulging discs (one of which had broken off and was banging against a nerve that ran down my right leg, producing a perverse harmony of numbness and excruciating torture), my profanity footprint had grown to dinosaur dimensions.
I'm no prude. How can you not appreciate the astonishing variety of colorful terms to be found in less savory slang references? Some of the more vivid and imaginative language in any tongue includes those coarse usages that honor the creative impulse even as they provoke parents to tremble and children to laugh in delight.
Still.
The careless or thoughtless deployment of profanity renders it banal, suppresses its effectiveness, lends it the auditory nutritive value of corn syrup and serves as an unfortunate reflection on yourself, those who raised you and the friends you keep.
How, then, to pay down this debt and shrink the footprint? First, by striving to become more mindful of the tendency to transgress, and self-arrest whenever reasonable. Second, by compensating for past transgressions with some mix of charitable donations this holiday season.
To quantify this, I estimated perhaps 1,000 profanities uttered in agony last winter and over the course of the months since then. Figuring a means-based nickel per involuntary vulgarity, a dime for each mindless one and twice that for each time I was within earshot of kids 12 and under, my ballpark profanity debt flirts with three figures.
There are any number of methods to spread this among local nonprofits this holiday season. There is great appeal in the various localized efforts to provide turkey dinners with all the trimmings for people who find themselves alone or in need on Thanksgiving. There are a plethora of holiday volunteer opportunities cropping up in the Good Works section of Isthmus' Guide and on TheDailyPage.com.
And considering the experience that generated such a huge profanity debt in the first place, I asked my primary physician where I might direct a contribution that would help people who are in pain themselves this holiday season, but uninsured or otherwise unable to gain entry into Madison's world-class health-care system. He suggested a donation to Access Community Health Centers (608-443-5517 or 443-5544).
Anyone who regrets spewing profanity can engage in this exercise according to their means and core beliefs. Doing so may be less consequential than striving to pay down your carbon debt or shrink your water footprint. It is perhaps also less urgent than paying down your credit-card debt or the national debt. It is, however, easier to do, its results are more immediate and closer to home and, at the holidays, the conversion of profanity debt into a surplus of goodwill yields a shared sense of community that burnishes the spirit of the season.
