Not cool but no apologies
Mary Henkel Judson

My mother was a lady. In all of my experience with her, I never heard a foul word pass through her lips - and I guarantee you we gave her plenty of opportunities.

She came close once. My sister and I were in high school, and my mother, not one to tell jokes, was telling us a joke. That was unusual enough, but it was clear the punch line was going to include a word that was not only not in our teenage vocabularies, but most definitely not in hers.

We were on our knees, begging her not to finish the joke, horrified that we might hear our mother use one of the foulest words in the English language. But the joke was on us, because the joke ended without use of the word that appeared to be its natural conclusion.

We were weak with relief. The experience was so traumatic I can't even remember what the joke was about, other than it included a duck.

I am not the lady my mother was, but I'm about to prove I'm a prude, and I won't apologize for it.

We were taken to task for not using the official name of a recent local event. In addition to not using the name of that event, we will not use the acronym for one of the local fishing tournaments.

Both are crude and not acceptable in a family newspaper. They will not appear in news columns of the South Jetty on my watch, and I don't apologize for that.

I have respect for the individuals involved in both of these events, but apparently we disagree on this issue.

What is acceptable now in terms of language, conduct and clothing is vastly different from 20 - even 10 - years ago.

The first time I heard the phrase, "That sucks!" I was disgusted. And I heard it on the radio. I'm still disgusted, yet I have been guilty of using it myself. Why? Because I've become desensitized by hearing it so often.

And so it goes. After you hear crude words and phrases for so long, they no longer have the shock value they once did, and they become common to our everyday language.

That language is transferred to t-shirts, bumper stickers, titles of movies and plays, names of businesses - the list goes on. It opens the door to public displays of crude behavior that women like my mother would find more than slightly offensive.

I'd like to be cool and let this roll off my back like water off a duck's back. But the truth is, I'm not cool, and I don't want to be if that's what it takes.