All Downstream from Here

 Long about 1960, I had a problem with my 4th-grade teacher. 

Someone had scrawled the f-word on a wall in the boys’ restroom. She accused me.

Why she chose me to pick on, I don’t know. I was not guilty of the offence. Furthermore, I was an exemplary 4th-grader, not a deviant wall-scrawler.

In this present day and age, such an inscription would probably be no big deal. The f-word seems to have f***ed its way into a place of honor among all the high-achievers of the expletive class.

When I was a young man, the preferred curse word was “damn”, as in “dammit!” or “I don’t give a damn!” or even the extreme-sports expletive “g**dammit”. 

But that grand old expletive of my generation has slidden through the 

downfall of Time and has been displaced by a new kid on the block:

F**k,

who has bullied his way into 21st-century vernacular like a bull in a china shop and has taken total control of all the expletive territory, formerly occupied by the dam.

Now you hear it everywhere, but especially in videos and movies online, f*** this and f***ing that, in reference to every damn trouble that arises between humans, or even . . .

even inconsequential stuff, insignificant events that would require, in a normal world, no cursory extremities. 

For instance, a person scrolling on their phone through social media might  suddenly exclaim, “I can’t f***ing believe it!” just because star-celeb Blahblah decided to break up with star-celeb Boohoo, when . . . honestly, a good ole “damn!” would have been sufficient to express the terrible tragedy of their over-dramafied breakup. 

You know what I’m talking about. . . the little sh*t stuff that happens every day and is no big deal but people nowadays get all bent out of shape about, exclaiming . . . “f*** this” and “f***ing” that, when a simple dammit would have been sufficient.  

This  extremely dystopian behaviour is certainly evidence that our world is now going to hell in a handbasket, slip-sliding slowly into the depths of depravity; now we will degenerate into some depraved  downfall like what happened during the Jan6 destruction when our Dome was damn-near demolished.

Damn!

Smoke