Stories from Bob's Life

I recall being about 7 years old – 2nd grade I believe, when we lived in Los Angeles for a few months after having just moved there from Hawaii. My father was sent to LA to attend a Navy school that he needed (I believe it was intelligence related) before he could take his next billet in Alameda, California. We would only be in LA for a few months, so my parents chose to rent a small apartment in a two story apartment complex in not-the-best-part of Inglewood, California.

I only have a few memories from that period. I wish I had thought to ask my parents about this period, and why they rented an apartment in this lower middle class neighborhood. I believe we were only there for a few months, but I remember trying to make friends with the kids in the neighborhood – and these were tough angry kids in the 6-9 year old range, who had formed up in informal gangs, and were VERY different from the kids I had known living in Navy base housing in Honolulu. We were having regular rock fight battles with kids from nearby neighborhoods, which shocked and scared me. We didn’t do that on base in Hawaii!

I remember that a young boy (probably 6 or 7 yrs old) lived in the apartment upstairs whose parents both worked. When he wasn’t in school, he was alone all day – a classic “latch-key’” kid. My mother was shocked. She would invite the boy down and feed him spend time with him. I found that interesting but didn’t pay much attention to it, and I never heard any more about it – about him, his parents, or whether my mother ever spoke to them.

Running with the rough kids in my neighborhood, I was learning a lot of new words and expressions that I hadn’t heard in the clean-cut gang I ran with in Hawaii, and which sounded pretty cool to me. These kids sounded tough and cool, and I wanted to be tough and cool. So I was looking for opportunities to strut my new stuff and use some of these tough and cool words and expressions. But I didn’t understand much about context, place or setting.

So, at dinner one night, my younger brother Scott said something I didn’t like, and I threw out the word “shit,” and was sternly advised by my parents that was not a good word to use. Not much later, my brother said something I found silly and (I guess I thought to myself) this would be a good opportunity to try out another cool expression I’d learned, and called him a “son of a bitch.” My father erupted out of his seat, grabbed and took me into the bathroom, jammed a bar of soap into my mouth, told me bite down while he pulled it out, and the soap was caught in my teeth. I sputtered – it tasted terrible. I was shocked, confused and embarrassed. He rarely if ever exploded like that with me. He was clearly angry and told me never to use language like that again.

One thing I learned from that was to be very careful bringing new words and expressions from the vacant lot playgrounds home. A good lesson to learn.

The irony is, that as I got to be an adult, I learned that my father was very fluent with colorful in the use of profanity and used it often and well. I have also become a bit notorious for not being shy about using profanity, sometimes in the “wrong” settings when either I’m not thinking, or I think it will help me make a point – to the discomfort of my more polite and staid friends. I learned some of that from one of the most vocal and colorful masters of profanity I ever knew: Dick Marcinko.