In Defense of Profanity
I learned to swear where most boys did: From the older guys I watched who looked the toughest. My Grandad, a salty former Navy gunner, who saw a lot of the Pacific ocean in the early 1940's, was the toughest guy I knew, and really laid down the basics for me. He could melt the paint off the side of a barn with a single phrase. He knew right where to add words to make his point...and he had a lot of points to make. I loved it. Particularly when it wasn't directed at me.
But I honed my craft - adding adjectives and emphasizing syllables - on the asphalt basketball court behind my grade school. There, the use of profanity was not a response to missed shots or blocked passes. I was accustomed to those. I wasn't a baller. One of the consolations brought about by middle age, in fact, is that nobody expects me to play anymore.
No, swear words back then were a bridge to acceptance among my peers that basketball wasn't offering. It's what twelve year olds did who didn't have a Schwinn Stingray to enhance their street cred.
I didn't have a Schwinn Stingray.
Before I go any further, I'm not an advocate for illicit speech. I don't allow the use of foul language at home among my sons, and I don't use it either.
Any more than is necessary, I mean.
There are some instances where nothing but a well-placed expletive matches the moment. Like when the flathead screwdriver you're using as a hole punch slips off of the plastic sheeting and goes directly into your hand, for instance. Realizing simultaneously that, 1) You are the only thing stopping a refrigerator from sliding back down sixteen wooden stairs into the basement from which it came, and, 2) The only person available to help is your wife, who now stands safely at the top of the stairs, in the same doorway that 3) is approximately one mis-measured inch too narrow to allow the refrigerator to pass through...is another considerable opportunity.
Strong speech was successfully brought to bear in both of those instances, by, um, a good friend of mine.
But I really never had the need to draw from my reserves, never truly expressed profanity as art, until I decided to disassemble the carbs on my 1980 Honda CB900.
Remember that part about me not being a basketball guy? Yeah, well, I'm not a mechanic, either. But I had a few things going for me: I wanted to get that bike running, and my lack of money was only exceeded by my lack of judgement.
So I tore the bike down as far as my knowledge would allow.
Once I did that, and had two bolts, the seat, and a plastic trim piece laying on the floor next to me, I had some decisions to make. Blind optimism prevailed, and I started unscrewing, twisting, and prying. In reasonably short order, I had a workbench full of jets, floats, needles and rotten rubber, the latter presumably intake boots, but it was hard to tell, since they were in pieces, and sort of obscured by the rear wheel...which was also now laying on the bench.
Here's a timesaving note to anyone with a CB900: to get to the carbs, you don't have to remove the rear wheel. Or the front wheel. Or the front forks, either. But those came apart pretty easily, and my wrenches were still warmed up, so why let valor be polluted by discretion?
After swearing, sweating, and dog-earing a Haynes manual for what seemed like a month, but was realistically probably only four weeks, I actually got that bike back together. And I would've been elated, too, if it would have started. I thought I sensed a faint kinship, when, after unloading it at the local mechanic's shop, (ironically located, in those days, inside a giant replica of a covered wagon), the proprietor expressed his dislike of working on Keihin carburetor banks. Or really any carburetor banks. Or any carburetors of any kind.
Because he lacked the proper manual, he warned it could take him up to two hours to get the job done. Two hours?? To clean and adjust the carbs?? It took that long to get the rear suspension bolts aligned and the tires aired back up when I tried it.
I feigned shock and dismay, and then offered up a short "damn", just to, you know, show that we were both cut from the same cloth. Only my cloth really didn't care one way or another if it took his cloth six days to fix it. I was going to sell that bike as soon as it was running. And I did.
I used the money to buy a 1995 Triumph Tiger. Affordable, because it was an obscure English bike, of which only a few hundred had ever been imported. Man, was that a relief. New motorcycle, clean slate. That bike also had a bank of carbs. Mikunis, if I remember correctly. Parts weren't readily available for anything that broke. And no local shop was ever going to help put that thing back together.
Just imagine the opportunities.