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Life lessons on language begin at the firehouse

By Ed Goldman

When I was growing up in New York City—or at least hoping I’d be allowed to; it can be a tough place)—my Mom had certain rules about swearing in our apartment. They probably can be summed up like so: Don’t.

Unfortunately, the scope of what she considered to be swearing was pretty specific. For example, we were instructed to never tell anyone, “Mind your own business.” My brothers and I were never clear on why that was considered to be profane or vulgar. But rather than ask, we decided to mind our own—well, you know. 

But we committed the prime sin of unquestionable obscenity if we told anyone, “Shut up!”

Now, in Harlem, where I was born—and the Bronx, where I was borne shortly after being born in Harlem—saying only “Shut up” was, for most people, akin to serving roast turkey without gravy. It made for an incomplete meal. Which is to say that in working-class neighborhoods such as mine, you not only told someone to “shut up” but also threw a bonus word into the mix, preceded by “the.” That bonus word was frequently “firetruck,” with five internal letters going AWOL. 

If you’re playing the home-version of this game and the rules on the inside of the box aren’t clear, I’m saying people in my crib used to tell someone to “Shut the [elided] firetruck up!”

Now, my Dad was an actual firefighter. He drove an actual firetruck—the big hook ‘n’ ladder version, which had a driver in the front (my Dad) and one in the back (do I care?). Working in life-threatening situations daily for 20 years, he might have been expected to say more than “shut up” in stressful moments. If so, we boys never heard about it. My Mom’s strictest rule about earthier language than “mind your own business” and “shut up” was that my Dad had to leave it at the firehouse.

I spent a lot of time with him in his final few years and have to say, even when we were on a walk and well out of my Mom’s earshot, he still rarely swore. Oh, he did his fair share of issuing Charlton Heston-manly “goddamn”s, “what-the-hell”s and “you lousy s.o.b.”s, all of which would be rated PG these days. But even those he uttered only on occasion—and never really with his heart in it. 

This is starting to remind me of a possibly apocryphal story (for younger readers: likely a lie). Mark Twain’s beloved wife Olivia got so fed up with his constantly swearing that one day she let loose a stream of obscenities. Supposedly, he laughed and said something like, “My dear, you know the words, but not the music.” 

(In apocryphal stories about great men’s comebacks to women, their responses always seem to start with “My dear.” This holds firm with a story told about Winston Churchill’s remark to a society woman who told him he was drunk. “Yes, my dear, and you’re ugly. But I shall be sober in the morning.” In genuine fiction, you may also recall that Rhett Butler’s farewell comment to Scarlett O’Hara was, “Frankly, my dear I don’t give a damn.” 

Anyway, this taboo has been on my mind lately because I’ve been finding myself yelling “Shut up!” at people on TV. Not just at our potty-mouthed POTUS, which I’m told is a national hobby for close to 50 percent of the electorate, but also at CNN’s pious, earnest and deadly dull Wolf Blitzer for telling us everything is “breaking news” every few minutes. And all the tsk-tsking Democrats bemoaning that their “message” wasn’t heard to explain its staggering loss of both Houses of Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court, due process, the law of the land and the separation of Lurch and State.