A childhood belief about swearing

When I was very young, almost six, one of my older cousins left a copy of Huckelberry Finn at my house. I started to read it and was puzzled when Huck told Tom about his life with the Widow Douglas.

To paraphrase, he said that he had to cuss for ten minutes just to get the taste back. My grand mother had always told me that if we kids said bad words or talked back that our tongues would turn black and shrivel up and fall right out of our heads.

Well, I wanted to know what it tasted like to cuss anyhow, so one morning after every one else had gotten up, I went upstairs and said every bad word I could think of. Needless to say, I didn't get any taste from it, just a bad case of the guilt and fear that I would wake up one morning and my tongue would be lying on my pillow beside me.