Children Will Listen

Today's blog post comes with theme music!  

     On Friday, my mother got home from work as my brother and I were about to take a walk to the Dandy, so we invited her along.  We had a nice walk as a family, and when we got back my brother asked if we could go down to the mall so he could buy some hats he'd planned on picking up before some of his friends canceled on him.

     We were having a good time, so we hopped in the car and drove the 45 minutes or so down to the mall, where we almost never go.  As long as we were out, we decided to have dinner, so when John had picked out his Suicide Squad and Dipper Pines hats, we headed up to Friendly's on the second level, to feast on ice cream and get actual food to take home.

     As I have discussed before, I have Tourette's Syndrome, which is a neurological condition in which a dopaminurgic disregulation results in vocal and mechanical tics.  Essentially, I make weird involuntary noises and twitch a lot.  Sometimes I swear, sometimes I scream, sometimes I trill like a bird, and I never know what's coming next or when a new tic will present itself.

     As mentioned in previous posts, one of the things that sets off my tics is changes in temperature, and in NY state we've had a long string of very, very hot weeks, so everyone keeps their air conditioning cranked up to eleven, which means a pretty severe change in temp whenever I enter a public building.  I'm also cold blooded (actual Reptilian Maggie Coates for Overlord 2k16), so the cold gets to me fairly quickly.

     This is all to say that by the end of our dining experience, during which I consumed an ice cream sundae for bonus cold points, I was feeling pretty ticky.

      I wasn't really paying much attention to anyone else in the restaurant until I turned my head to shout "Goddamn" at the cushion of my seat, at which point I heard the mother of two at the table behind me say, "Well she's going to Hell."

     At this point I'd like to remind you that this is not a nice thing to say about anyone, regardless of your personal religious views, especially when you are well within earshot of the person to whom you are referring.

      The children laughed, because of course they would, Mommy made a funny, and when Mommy makes a funny, we laugh.  The little boy then proceeded to make coo-coo bird noises at me as I twitched and jerked about, and if I had looked behind me I probably would have caught him with a finger looping aerial circles around his ear.  His mother laughed and let him continue with this for about a minute before she told him he should probably be quieter.

     No shit, Mom.

     At no point did I turn to speak to her, though I wanted to.  After strike two I decided if they said anything further, I'd say something, but we left shortly thereafter.

     As soon as we left, I wished I had said something.  I always feel that way after I decide to "just ignore it."  It makes me feel as though I've betrayed my people--as though I've let down the entire human race, even. Certainly I've deprived those children of an early opportunity to learn from their mother's mistakes.

     "But Maggie, you're overreacting!  She couldn't have known you had Tourette's!"  Okay, yeah, maybe not.  But should that have mattered?  For one, when I do my herky-jerky tics, which I was doing then, I look a lot like I'm having a seizure or a stroke.  If you were having a seizure or a stroke, and you heard people making fun of you instead of maybe, I don't know, wondering if you were okay or maybe needed medical assistance, you wouldn't be super pleased, now would you?

     "But you weren't having a stroke or a seizure!"  Okay, true.  But it's still demeaning and dehumanizing, other-izing at the very least.  It's embarrassing enough to have people stare at you whenever you go out in public, to have to calm down the wait staff whenever you scream for no reason, or worry that that police officer is going to think you're flashing gang signs or flipping them off on purpose or is going to arrest you for public indecency (you can still, I'll remind you, be arrested or fined for public cursing in this country).  Having people openly mocking you, children, openly mocking you, is demoralizing at its best.

     And what if my actions weren't the result of a neurological disorder?  If I really was suffering from a nervous breakdown (which I have done before and will do again, or my surname isn't Coates), or delusions, or I had the DT's or some other form of withdrawal?  If I was having a psychotic episode, would that make me any less deserving of basic human empathy?  Would that make it any more right to mock me for something I couldn't control?

      There's no honor in mocking the disabled.

      Let me say it louder for the people in the back:  There is no honor in mocking the disabled.

     There's certainly no honor in (essentially) telling someone they're going to hell because they swore involuntarily.  I've been through that before, lady, my classmates in high school called me Satan for years, and every other week someone openly wonders if I'm possessed.  Brushing it off is second nature at this point.  Brushing a lot of things off is second nature at this point.

     And yet....

     I can't really let this one go until I get it off my chest, this you-didn't-say-anything guilt that I get.  Because it's me today, and I can take it--next week is someone just slightly less stable than I am, someone more vulnerable, someone younger, someone more afraid, someone less able to defend themselves, someone who hates themselves more, someone--anyone!  Because cruelty, especially cruelty to a stranger, doesn't stop with one person.  Cruelty to a stranger never stops with one person.

     And probably what bugs me most about this particular case was that this was a mother, teaching her two young children through example and tacit approval that it's perfectly acceptable to make fun of disabled people within their range of hearing.  Teaching her children, through example and tacit approval, that people with disabilities, people who behave a little oddly, people who dare to act a little different than the norm, do not deserve respect and exist to be ridiculed.

     And that--that right there--is what kills me.  That's what makes me so angry, so frustrated with myself for not speaking up.  It's one thing for a judgmental asshole to be wandering the world, making fun of young women (teenagers) for things they can't control.  But to teach your children that that is an acceptable lifestyle is unconscionable!  If it had been a child poking fun, and the parent had reprimanded them, I'd let it go--I'd know that the kid was in competent hands, and the parents were doing their best to do right by their kid.

     But it's not fair to me, or others like me, when a parent teaches their children to mock.  It's not fair to the children, that they're being taught by their parents to mock.  It's not fair to those children's children, either--and somewhere along that family line, there's going to be a child who ends up "off."  Tourette's has a typical onset of ages 7-12, so in the next six years, both those kids could wake up one day with tics!  They probably won't, and I wouldn't wish it on them (life is hard enough already, and with that kind of mother they don't need this kind of hot mess on their plates), but everyone who thinks they're normal eventually finds out they're wrong.  Unless they're deluding themselves.

     Here's the facts:  Children listen to what you say, watch what you do, and learn from what you teach, whether you intend them to or not.  If you're cruel to other people, your children will become cruel; if you're kind to other people, your children will become kind.

     But children also pay attention to what you don't say, to what you don't do, to what your face does when they do something.  They seek your approval and try to please you.  And if your son finds out that making fun of "crazies" makes you laugh, he'll do it again.  And again.  And again and again and again.  Because it makes Mommy happy, so it's the right thing to do.   Children follow in the footsteps of their parents and teachers, and a lot of the time, bullying begins with the adults.  With that we-are-both-sane-so-we-are-inherently-better laugh, or a smile that says "God that kid was so annoying, I have to reprimand you for hitting her but Jesus Christ did I want to do it myself, good job."

     Children want to make their parents happy.

      So be the person your Mom would want you to be.  Or, if your mother was an ass, be better than she was.  Encourage your children to be better than you are--why would we have children if we didn't want a better world for them than the world we grew up in ourselves?

     And if you're going to make fun of disabled people, don't do it in front of your kids.  They'll listen.

     Then they'll repeat.

To Swear or Not To Swear

     I missed a lot of updates because blah blah blah life happens, nobody cares, let's move on.  Hopefully I'll be able to make that up to you all, so here's an "I'm sorry" article that ends with almost everyone already in the right!  Excellent job, you beautiful readers and writers, jolly good form!

     So, should you swear in your book?  Should you not swear?

     The answer is yes.

     We live in a world in which cursing is the norm--whether you yourself swear or not, you know people who do, and many of the people who don't typically condone swearing will swear from time to time--when their kid gets themselves arrested, when they stub their toe, when they mindlessly repeat whatever their parents just said without thinking.  And it sells!  People care less and less about vulgar language these days; my generation (and those before and after mine, naturally) is casting aside the stigma as the words lose their power, and we'll probably be seeing brand new curse words coming in to take their place in the future.  People swear, and that's realistic.

     But if you aren't comfortable with cursing?  Don't curse.  There's still a large population that dislikes vulgarity, and unless the dialogue is written poorly, no one who does swear is going to care that the F-bomb hasn't been dropped.  They probably won't even notice!

     So ultimately, it's up to you!  Find what you're comfortable with and stick to it.

     If you're torn up about it, though, here are a few things to keep in mind.

1. Your Characters.     If you're on the fence, this might be the most important question of all.  What kind of person is your character?  Are they rough, tough, tumble?  Crass?  Do they delight in offending others?  Or are they sweet, demure, easily embarrassed or overprotected?  Or somewhere in between?  Maybe the latter fits Clarissa to a T--but she loves watching the look on others' faces when they hear a high-voiced little darling call her teacher a cunt.  Or perhaps the former more accurately describes Thomas--but his mother died when he was young, and since she never cared for foul language, he pays homage to her by trying not to cuss.  At the end of the day, who your character is will best determine whether they'll swear.  Try to analyze each of your characters closely and determine the best lingual choice for each.  When in doubt, let the characters talk it out.                                                                                                     
2. Your Audience.     This is one I personally pay less attention to, but if you're writing for a specific audience it could be important to consider.  I mean, nine times out of ten you wouldn't write a picture book where every fifth word was fuck (although the exception is a masterpiece), and a devout elderly Christian probably wouldn't care for something like Stephen King's Firestarter (true story--I borrowed the book from the library a couple years ago only to find that someone had run through every curse word with black sharpie).  If you're writing for an intended audience, you might want to analyze what that audience wants and make your decisions based on that.                                             
3. Levels and Balance.     There are levels to cursing.  You have things like My Little Pony, without a curse word in sight, or books like Harry Potter, where only one curse word was ever really used.  Then there's Stephen King, sowing and reaping casual cusses as far as the eye can see, and Homestuck, where nothing would be the same if it weren't for Andrew Hussie's famed flagrancy.  My Little Pony and similar shows find ways around swearing that seem organic and realistic for the age group appealed to; same thing with Harry Potter.  None of the dialogue seems tacky or unintentionally hilarious/infuriating, and the one use of obscenities is, without a doubt, grand.  

                My mother and I listened to The Deathly Hollows on CD a few months after the book came out, and when Molly finally cut loose at the end and cried, "Get away from my daughter, you bitch!" it had us standing and cheering.  It was a superb use of powerful language, made all the more powerful by its absence in the rest of the story.  If Molly had been known to curse like a sailor, the line would have fallen a little flat due to common exposure--you probably don't go outside and ogle every tree you see, because trees are pretty commonplace in this world.  It's the same for cursing--most people don't jump when a teenager swears, but when a seven-year-old tells someone to go fuck themselves, holding about their person all the vicious malice they're capable of, it can take a few minutes for the words to settle in.  Exposure causes expectation.  Keep that in mind.

                At these levels, it's a delicate balancing act for people who are typically exposed to cursing.  For those who aren't--well, I've never really been one of those kids, but for nine or ten years I WAS a kid who didn't believe in cursing.  For myself, at least.  And it was easier then to write for children than it is now.  Growing up is tough on your sensibilities, kids, I don't recommend it.

                At the more "vulgar" level, the balancing act shifts to retaining intelligence and coherence without sacrificing realism.  People swear; people swear a lot, some more than others.  Some people (Second Selectman Rennie in Under The Dome) use substitutes for actual curse words while others (Doc Scratch in Homestuck) curse almost not at all, and others still (Karkat Vantas) don't seem capable of speaking without spewing forth a volcano of molten obscenities.  King does an excellent job with his character development, and typically doesn't swear in narration unless it's attached to the thoughts of said characters.  Hussie, on the other hand, swears whenever the fuck he feels like in his narration--the intelligence in his work is demonstrated instead through advanced lingual skill and the plot itself.

                Whether you curse or not, it's about balance.  Do you think it's easier to avoid cursing and preserve intelligence, or to curse and preserve intelligence?  Either way, that's what you're aiming for; preserving intelligence and coherence.  Think it over, look at a few different styles of writing, and try to figure out which option you think is best for you.  Not for anyone else; just you.  It's your story, after all.


     Like I said, in the end, whatever you choose, if it's right for you, it's the right decision.
   
     Justification for not cursing:  It's not realistic, it doesn't fit the characters, it doesn't fit the story.
 
     Justification for cursing:  It's realistic, it fits the characters, it fits the story.

     Just one request, though, from the depths of my heart--please, whatever you do, don't demonize cursing or the people who curse.  No, it's not a large population, less than ten percent of the roughly 2.4% of children with Tourette's have it, but children and adults with coprolalia can't control that they curse, and the looks and whispers and insults garnered because people so highly associate swearing with uneducated, uncouth heathens can be overwhelming.  I might get into that in another post, but just remember that while swearing is sometimes a choice or indicative of lesser mental capacities--sometimes it's just a product of genetics or society.

     TL;DR:  Do what works for you.