View From ThE Apple House

It’s a few days before Thanksgiving, a time when I become introspective, mindful of what I’ve accomplished and what goals I’d like to tackle next.  I welcome the opportunity for constructive criticism, striving to become a better person.

Much to my chagrin, it has come to my attention I have been cursing way too much, and in public.  Out loud.  Loudly.

Specifically, dropping the F bomb.  I think we all know what word to which I am referring.

After I was oh-not-so-gently-informed by my husband I had said it one too many times in front of his 85 year old mother, and worse, in front of my grandchildren, nieces and nephews, I started to question about how this practice started,  what caused its eruption.

It’s not that the word was a part of my everyday language, rather, it was way to punctuate a point or pepper a conversation.  Or so I thought.

I didn’t always curse.  I had been taught a lady didn’t speak like that.  I didn’t grow up around people who used ‘bad’ language, and I certainly didn’t drop the bomb around my kids when they were growing up.   Lord knows I had the motive, especially when they were teenagers. But I never felt the need to blast them to get my point across.  Sure, I could get away with “get your damn feet off the coffee table” or “get the hell out of here and do your homework” or “do I look like a stupid ass to you?”  The closest any “F” word flew across my lips was if I had to say “Are you frickin’ kidding me?  It cost how much?”

It wasn’t until they were all grown and out of the house I began to feel a certain freedom, a sense of abandon, to express myself in a particular way.  I no longer had to look over my shoulder to see who might be listening, or if my words would burn the wax out of little ears.

At the I-should-definitely-know-better age of 50, I became involved with a stand up comedian, whom I eventually married.  He really wasn’t that funny, but he thought I was.

“Hey, you’re f*cking hilarious, why don’t you get up on the f*cking stage with me? You’ll f*cking bring the house down!”

Was he f*cking kidding me?

Or was he serious.  It turned out, he was, and he was right.

F*cking A.

I was f*cking funny.

Not bring the house down f*cking funny, but I could hold my own amongst the pack.

Traveling to comedy clubs all over the country, I was exposed to different varieties of comics.  Driving two hours to a club for 10 minutes of stage time became my life.

I witnessed the way things worked.  Locals who struck a nerve with the community were embraced, only to be replaced by someone who would work for next to nothing.  Old timers who had been hilarious back in the comedy boom of the 1980’s were now bitter and resentful.   They didn’t talk to anyone and the best they could get now was a guest spot for a more established local, or as an opener for the newest up and comer.  Either that or they thought of it as thinning out the herd.

Some had been on television, appearing on Fallon, Conan, or Kimmel.  They were famous enough to have worked with legendary names and couldn’t understand why their fame hadn’t been catching, why hadn’t it rubbed off on them.  Not all of them, of course.  Some were helpful and genuinely interested in guiding you in the right direction.  But the environment leant itself to so much negativity. 

Doing a good job was ‘killing’ as in “I f*cking killed last night, and I f*cking hated that crowd.”     Not to be confused with dying, of course.  Literally.  Its a hard life, that comedy.  People died (failed) not only on stage, but when they got out to their car.  Heart attacks and strokes mostly.  It was, and is still very, very sad.  Some were gone before they even had a chance.  “Hey, didja hear about f*cking Joe?  He f*cking died in the parking lot.  F*cking shame.  Whatta f*cking guy.” 

Its common knowledge Women Comics have to work twice as hard to get in the door of anything, and comedy is no different.

If she was successful, it was assumed she ‘slept with the f*cking club owner’ or ‘someone wrote the material for her, she couldn’t come up with that f*cking funny shit herself’ or the material was so self-depreciating some felt sorry for her and laughed.  Of course, the F bomb was always lurking and generally used, at the very least, as a comma.  It knows no gender.

There were women who were much wittier than I, men who were deep thinkers, quickly apparent in their sets.  Some wove stories and finished them up with words of wisdom, or even a blessing.   Some were absolutely fantastic and some were just plain awful, they f*cking stunk up the joint.   Of course, one could always work ‘clean’, not cursing or referring to sex or anything else.  Family oriented comedy is a very specific genre, extremely hard to concur, but it can be done.

In reality, the comedy business tends to weed out the really bad.  They just don’t get hired, and the best they can hope for in any exposure is at an open mic, where they are liable to get booed off the stage anyway.  Did I mention there’s usually alcohol and God-knows-what-else involved?  Yeah, that tends to lend itself to speak more fluently in f*ckingisms.

I made a lot of great friends I am in contact even today (thanks Facebook) and met some really neat people.  Devoted to their craft, they wrote and wrote, practiced and practiced and became hometown famous.  For some, that was the most they could hope for and all they would ever have.  F*cking tough business, that comedy.

Anyway, the marriage didn’t last, but evidently the cursing did.

It was no longer ‘Please pass the salt” but ‘Please pass the f*ckingsalt’ or ‘where the f*ck is the salt, is it all f*cking gone,  are you f*cking kidding me?  Oh for f*cks sake!”

How did it come to this?  How did I get such a f*cking potty mouth?  Wine helps.  Ah, the f*cking wine.  With wine, every word is hilarious, every thought a sign of genius, and every decision a declaration.  But you sound like a f*cking idiot.

So as this year comes to a close, I will make an effort to be more mindful of what I say, how I say it, and why I say it.

Who am I f*cking kidding.  That will probably last a f*cking day.   My kids will want to know what the f*cking f*ck is wrong with me.

But I’ll never say it again in front of my mother in law, that’s for f*cking sure.