What the @#!&!?!

OK, so I admit it, she who is without curse words shouldn't throw stones.

But I can't help it.

Last week, I overheard a mother cursing-out her young daughter. The child was about eight. She looked forlorn, beaten-down. The mom was dropping the F-bomb, something about the girl's father. They were waiting for a bus and, as I passed by, Mommy screamed her curses loud enough for me, her innocent daughter, and the people in the next county to hear without straining. I didn't make eye contact with Mommy. I think she wanted attention, so I saw no evil, heard no evil, and walked on by.

Yesterday, in a store, surveying the shoe selection, I couldn't help but hear a young guy blabbing on his cell phone, dropping the F-note like it was the world's only noun and adjective. He was with another guy and they were following a woman whom I assumed was their mother. The posse drew closer to me and sonny-boy continued his loudmouthed diatribe, F-this and F-that. I was mad as heck and couldn't take it anymore. "Hey, HEY, do you mind?" I said sternly, directing my words to him but looking at the mom as if to infer, "Can't you make your grown son behave civilly in public?" She just nudged her progeny along and gave me a dazed "whaddayagonnado?" look.

As I already admitted, I can curse like a truck driver who used to be a sailor. But, hopefully, I do it with people whom I trust and in the privacy of our own conversations. I live next to a grade school and I often hear loud cursing from the playground during recess. But what do you expect? If you are a child and your F-ing mother is screaming on a street corner about your F-ing father in front of F-ing strangers, you will do the same. Frankly, I think it's a doggone shame. And I'm going to make a resolution: the next time a curse word starts to spill out of my big mouth, I'm gonna make a real effort to replace it with something more original. F-ing A.

Giving Colds the Cold Shoulder

Ahhhhh, you have a coooooold, huh?

That's what everyone asked me this week, tilting their heads in great sympathy.

But I don't know why people get all revved-up over a cold. It's not diptheria or scabies, it's just a cold. Years ago, I had a friend who would announce that she had a cold with the same level of anguish typically attributed to state funerals or murder/suicides. Since then, I have been loathe to wallow in cold-angst.

A North Carolina woman named Martha Mason died recntly. She spent 61 of her 71 years living in an 800-pound, seven-foot iron lung after being stricken with polio and paralyzed from the neck down. Now she had something to complain about. I don't know if you are familiar with an iron lung, but it's a huge, tubular device, like an MRI, that you lie in, permanently. I saw a movie when I was young that featured a little girl who was confined to an iron lung. Let me tell you, an iron lung makes an impression on you when you're a kid. Forget detention, threaten me with an iron lung and you'd get my attention back in the day... At any rate, despite her six decades in an iron lung, Ms. Mason graduated at the top of her college class and wrote an autobiography using a voice-recognition computer. God bless her soul. I bet that she never bellyached about a cold.

As for the rest of you, the next time you feel the sniffles coming on, buck-up, grab a tissue and get on with it.

JON AND KATE, PLUS HATE

OK, now here's my advice: never, ever be a braggart.

That especially applies to you famous people.

Don't gush about how much you and your spouse can't keep your toes off of each other, don't give us a list your "incredible" child's talents, don't say how smart you were to have sold your stocks before the economy went poooof. 

Because you know what happens when you do that? The universe conspires to set your smarty-pants self straight. So as soon as you confess to PEOPLE MAGAZINE that your lover is also your incredibly good-looking, sweet-smelling soul mate, BAM, your lust is bound to fizzle.

I think that's what happened to Jon and Kate of TLC fame. They always bragged about how their marriage was as everlasting as the Sierra Mountains. Even in the intro to their show, their mantra was "we're in this together." To reiterate, they held a re-commitment ceremony in front of their eight kids this year to renew their marriage vows. And then, just as soon as I sighed deeply at the beauty of their enduring bond, whambamthankyou, ma'am, the two of them tiptoed into the verge of a breakup.

See? I told you. KEEP YOUR BIG MOUTH SHUT, FAMOUS PEOPLE! Realize that you are just mortal and if you happen to be lucky enough to enjoy love, money, family, clear skin, etc., smile to yourself and savor it quietly.

Even if Entertainment Tonight begs you for details, ZIP IT. That way, you don't have to eat your words, the rest of us don't have to wallow in jealousy at your magnificent life, and a collective peace will envelop the earth.

Until then, have I told you lately how marvelously my book has been selling?

And the Password IS...

OK, I want to you try this: Make a list of all your passwords. You know, they're the secret code you invented for your ATM and your Lands End account and your online banking and all that other good stuff. Sure, sure, you want to use just a single code for everything, but then some son of a gun on Facebook already has the nerve to stake a claim on your masterpiece, so you have to create another gem. Once you make your list, sit back and think of a day when the only code you had to remember was the number on your bicycle lock. Dems were da days...What's with all these passwords, anyway? Do we really need a password to find out more about Comedy Central? To become an inside member of the Victoria's Secret frequent buyers club? Is it just me or does it all seem a bit much? I just wanna scream, "Relax, everyone!" but I never do, I just scan my brain for a new, fresh, clever code. And then, before you know it, my head becomes so crammed, I up and forget the code to my bike lock...

Free Books and the Devil Whiskey

Saw an excellent play last week, "The Seafarers." In it, several Irishmen who have been downing glass after glass of whiskey, beer and "poteen" (strong Irish moonshine) on a Christmas Eve refer to some vagrants who are carrying on in an alley as "dem winos." You have to love it, don't you, the Irish pot calling the Irish kettle black? Anyway, on the drive home through downtown, trying to contemplate the message of the play, I noticed a bunch of young people rummaging through boxes of books that were being thrown out for trash day. I slowed down my car, lusting after the goods as only a true trash-picker can. "Anything good?" I asked one young woman who was holding onto an old, hardcover book. "Just some funny stuff," she replied, showing me the title, "1,000 Things to Do Before You Get Married." Ha, I advised her, it's more like a million things - no rush! We both had a good laugh at that one - the young twenty-something, out  for the night with her friends, and me, the old married broad who was single until she was 46. But I didn't tell the youngster that long tale, nor did I compete with her and her pals for literary treasures on the curbside. I just waved goodbye, drove off and left them to their foraging and the pursuit of fun things to do before they - maybe - get married some day. Then I returned to ruminating about the play in which the Devil visits two of the Irishmen to collect their souls in a deal they made with him years ago. Could the Devil symbolize alcohol, which we learn during the course of the play, is the root of all the considerable misery in these characters' lives? Hmmmmm. I'll have to think about that one - preferably, over a nice cuppa tea.