Stay-at-Home Dad: Language, Ladies

I remember watching an episode of MTV Cribs where they were touring the home of rapper Lil' Kim, before her prison stint.  When she entered her cavernous kitchen, she opened her refrigerator and said, "You aint got no class, unless you got Cristal in the fridge."  

Well I do have a lot of things in my fridge, but noticeably absent is a $200 bottle of bubbly.  There is however one of those giant tubs of ketchup from Costco, you know, the kind that they only sell in pairs.  

At my present rate of consumption I should get to its twin by the middle of 2012, unless of course the Mayans were right.

The other night my wife and I went for a long stroll through the bucolic streets of Scarsdale.  This late-summer evening had a cool breeze and all was quiet as we made our way down Griffin Avenue.  Then off in the distance we could hear faint cries that sounded like profanities.  As we got closer, the sounds grew to screams, and the profanities grew to flat out vulgarities. 

It was amazing, I thought that we had stumbled across some type of special needs cheer camp for girls with Tourette syndrome.  Turns out that I was wrong; it was only the women's tennis league competing over at the Quaker Ridge Country Club.  

These well-dressed ladies were playing hard, and being even harder on the English language.  Maybe they were out-of-towners, but I was proven wrong when I noticed that the assembly of behemoth SUV's in the parking lot were all adorned with those familiar "Circle of Friends" magnets.  

So much for the hoi polloi, when the country club set is cursing like truck drivers, but I would wager that they have some Cristal in their refrigerators, or at least in their built-in 360 bottle Sub-Zero cooler to be more specific.

I guess that the problem here is when the gentry start to sound like Merchant Marines, where do we go as a society?  I notice more and more children and young adults using foul language at the playgrounds, on the ball fields, and even in restaurants. I have even once been forced to resort to the age-old act of washing my own child's mouth out with soap.  

Although, the soap these days doesn't even taste too bad, so I think that it may have backfired.  This was confirmed when my oldest son asked if Neutrogena also made ice cream.

As parents we owe it to our kids not to use foul language in front of them.  There are words that can artfully be used as a substitute for some expletives.  The "F" word can be replaced with many expressions.  I prefer some of the following:  frick, fudge, fiddlesticks and my favorite; flippin'.

I am sure that you have your own favorite substitute words, so please start f%!@ using them!