My First F-Bomb

There’s a scene in “A Christmas Story” where Ralphie is helping his dad change a spare tire. As Ralphie’s dad is attempting to break his own personal record for fastest flat tire change, the lug nuts are knocked into the air, and as they arc in slow motion out into the darkness Ralphie says, “fuuuudge.”

Only he didn’t say fudge…

Fair warning, I won’t be saying fudge after the break, either…

 

The observation that Tom Brady says fuck and apparently a lot. Though I’m not sure what the statistics are for daily use by males, 35-45; if you believe crowd-sourced knowledge, the average person swears 80-90 times a day. Most of us don’t do it on national television, of course. “Brady says ‘fuck!’” has become something of a thing here in New England (and the rest of the pigskin world, too). The Boston Globe got the party started with an editorial sparked by Brady barking fuck in a brevity-is-the-soul-of-wit moment at the end of the Green Bay game. In but a single perfectly chosen word, he expressed the emotional stew of anger, frustration, regret and disappointment that had been served up in the Patriots’ 26-21 loss.

The Globe editorial saw Brady’s not bon mot as part of a larger pattern of institutionalized poor sportsmanship on the part of the New England football franchise. I’m a terrible homer so I probably didn’t notice it. When Gronk threw Sergio Brown out of the club, I thought it was adorable. Boys being boys. One on one football. Anyway, what Tom Terrific should’ve said was…

“Well played, Cheeseheads!”

Wait. Cheeseheads might be taken as the sneering sarcasm I intended. I’m pretty sure sneering sarcasm is off the table if we’re going for good sportsmanship. So. How about…

“Well played, lads!”

Wait. Lads might be thought of as a diminutive or an attempt to infantilize the opponent. Okay…

“Well played!”

Sure, it’s twice as many words as “Fuck!” but still pithy. Concise. Succinct. Boring. And so much more sportsmanlike!

Perhaps just as importantly, Tom needs to think of the children. How are the parents watching the game with their small, impressionable children supposed to explain what the heroic quarterback of their favorite team just said? (Hint: Fudge.) I would think it might be a little bit more difficult to reassure little Caitlin that no, Brandon Browner did not just kill Ladarius Green but maybe that’s just me.

Back to Ralphie. Ralphie gets his mouth washed out with soap for saying not fudge. He’s also asked wherever could he have learned such language. (Hint: Not Tom Brady. “A Christmas Story” was released in 1983. And yes, I’ll stop with the hint thing.) Ralphie, like most of us, learned such language from his father (or some adult in our young, impressionable lives and I refuse to stop using parentheses). Spoiler Alert: Seriously, you’re the last person on the planet who hasn’t seen this movie? Ralphie blames one of his friends, knowing somehow (and correctly) he couldn’t say he’d learned the appropriate use of the word fuck from his dad.

I remember the first time I head the word. My dad was home on leave and we were visiting the farm. It was late summer and they were haying. My dad and I joined my grandpa Smith and my uncle Ross; grandpa Smith was driving the tractor pulling the hay baler and behind that, the flatbed wagon. No doubt he was also smoking a cigar. We were on the flatbed. Uncle Ross was hooking bales of hay as they came up the chute at the back of the bailer, then stacking them as my dad visited with his youngest brother and I stood there marveling at the machinery, marveling at the round-edged geometry of the neatly raked hay in the fields, a stand of maple trees on a nearby hill, the setting sun and the orange-smeared clouds, wondering why it felt so good to grab my doo-hickey (I was four). Then I heard my uncle Ross say fuck. He had hooked a bale of hay as my grandpa was turning the caravan of tractor, baler and wagon and he nearly tipped over as the bale came out in the middle of the turn and he momentarily lost his balance. He was almost pulled under the front of the wagon before he could unhook the bale. Upon which my uncle Ross said, “Fuck!”

I’d never heard that word before. Immediately, my dad said, “Let’s go back down to the farmhouse. I think we’re distracting your uncle Ross.” I thought, I wasn’t distracting uncle Ross; I’m just minding my own business. It’s merely a coincidence I have my right hand in my pocket. Then I thought, what was that word uncle Ross just said? He said that word and all of a sudden, we had to back down to the farmhouse where my mom was bound to ask me why I had my right hand in my pocket all the time. Is that single word the reason why we had to go? What was this seemingly powerful and totemic word and what did it mean other than, please don’t let me get pulled under this wagon?

As I grew into adulthood, I learned that fuck has many meanings. I learned that it means, I just hit my thumb with a hammer so hard my testicles drew back up into my body! It also means, I got an 18 on my Physics mid-term! It means, I lost my wallet with my driver’s license and credit cards! It means, my alarm didn’t go off, I’m stuck in traffic and I’m going to be late for the staff meeting, my car won’t start/broke down/has a flat tire! It means, your insurance doesn’t cover that!

For Tom Brady it means, I hate losing football games!

I’m cool with that.