Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Figuratively Speaking

So yesterday Betty and I were talking about how excited I was that the new year had begun. She said, "You didn't have a very good year last year, did you?"

To which I replied, "My entire year sucked ass."

My poor little mother. She looked stricken. "Sweetheart! That's a terrible expression! Suck ass! Oh! Awful! Don't say that!"

"Sorry."

You say these things often enough, you really don't think about the visual. (One might, of course, question my need to say "suck ass" so often.) Yeah, sucking ass. Really not appealing. I mean, for me. I don't judge if it's your thing.

I think maybe, considering the countires we've lived in, and our acute awareness of parasites being transmitted through fecal-oral contact (it only takes the tiniest microscopic bit of poo), it makes the idea of it all the worse for us. Or for her. Clearly I run around talking about ass-sucking very cavalierly. I just don't actually do it. I promise, mom and dad, if you're horrified and wondering.

I'm becoming friends with a friend of my friend Jane, via the blog. He's a really good writer, so when I was starting the blog, she emailed him the link, asking if he could help come up with a tag line. He emailed me recently to say that he likes my writing, and that he thinks I write like I talk. And now we've struck up a correspondence.

So I relayed the story about horrifying Betty with the "2006 sucked ass" comment. To which he replied, "2002 was my ass-sucking year."

This was followed quickly with, "I mean, that didn't come out quite right. But you know what I mean."

I do. I certainly do.

3 comments:

  1. My mother thinks "sucks" itself is a cuss word. I tell her she is being way to literal, but she gets so upset I try to keep it to a minimum.

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  2. I laughed so hard when I read this. I really like your writing style. This reminds of a landlady I had in Muncie, Indiana. She claimed that my apartment was where David Letterman lived when he went to Ball State. Anyway, her name was Mrs.Cox. She must have been about 200 years old. Her favorite saying when angry with someone was..."I ought to eat his ass out!" Like you, I guess she didn't consider the visual.

    Occassionally, we'd hear Mrs. C. yelling at one of our fellow renters. We had a lot of fun with it, though, there goes Mrs. Cox, eating someone's ass out again....Bon apetit!

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  3. Now it's my turn to laugh out loud! Poor Mrs. Cox! What a great story! Thanks!

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