Bad Language: Prompt

I consider myself a genial kind of guy. Apart from a reasonably high-profile falling out with a friend of a friend recently, my record for getting on with people is practically blemish-free. In addition, I tend to find that I get on with people from all walks of life very quickly, and often find myself talking about all manner of personal and unusual subjects with people I’ve only known a few minutes.

However, it also appears that I have the kind of face and/or personality which says to people “This guy clearly loves to hear lots of incredibly aggressive swear words shortly after meeting someone, so let’s say some. Immediately”

You’ll be surprised to learn that bad language doesn’t exactly upset me. I’m not the most frequent exponent of its use in my group of friends, but I’m all for a bit of ‘industrial’ language to get my point across rather than that flowery nonsense most people go for. Indeed, if I could guarantee that such prose wouldn’t upset readers, I would in all likelihood sprinkle massively inappropriate words throughout my blogs, simply because I can. However, given that I can’t guarantee non-friends won’t read this, I have to keep it clean and ultimately avoid any potential legal wranglings.

The reason I mention this skill of drawing bad language out of people came about after a recent trip to Dublin. To and from the airport I unsurprisingly used local taxi drivers. Both were chirpy salt-of-the-earth types who had opinions on everything from traffic police to the state of the economy. I was happy to join in with my opinions and thoughts on many subjects, but out of respect and a lack of knowledge of the drivers’ tolerances to swearing, kept it clean.

The same cannot be said of the drivers.

Bear in mind I was in the company of both drivers for less that 20 minutes combined, yet I heard 30-plus f-words, multiple ‘bastards’ and even a couple of the ‘bad’ swear word. You know, the one that starts with ‘c’ and isn’t ‘cock’ or ‘compass’. Yeah, that one.

Now, like I said, such language doesn’t bother me (in fact, given the Irish accent, the word ‘cont’ actually made me laugh, which may or may not be racist), but surely these guys must come into contact with people from all parts of the social spectrum on a daily basis, so liberal use of the c-bomb shouldn’t be encouraged? Assuming these guys are aware of the fact they’re being paid for their driving service, they have to be very careful not to offend people and jeopardise their pay day. I can therefore only assume that within a few seconds of meeting me, people think “This guy clearly likes a bit of blue language. It would be rude to disappoint”. Either that or such language is as clean as the proverbial baby’s bottom in Ireland, so it isn’t deemed offensive to lob it into every other sentence.

I’m still not sure if I’m proud or not. I probably am though.