swearing

I used to believe that "bum" was a bad word, because I got in trouble when I saw a bum and shouted "LOOK! LOOK AT THE BUM! BUUUUMMM!" as loudly as I could.

Hannah

When I was about 5 I was talking on the phone with my father - he to this day has somewhat of a dirty mouth - and apparently he used the word "f*ck" in a sentence and I'm not quite sure why but until I was about 10 or 11 I would SWEAR to you that it meant one of those red tin wagons. I think I even put it on my Christmas list one year to my mother's utter horror.

Kitty

I thought that "fart" was a bad word. my mom told me never to say it. once i said it quietly infront of my mom. when she asked what i had said, i told her i said "Bart." i was shocked when i heard someone else's mother say the word. i still feel weird saying it.

Anon

At Christmas when we heard the poem The Night Before Christmas, the one with the guy who got up and saw santa and all... well anyway there was a part where it was describing santa with his stomach that shook like jelly and all, and they said that he "turned with a jerk" and I thought that teh poem had a curseword in it, and that it said santa was a jerk.

nick

In kindergarten, we believed that if you stuck up your pinky finger, that was the bad finger instead of the middle finger. This created a lot of confusion for our teachers when we said that someone stuck the 'bad finger' but we meant the pinky.

Anon

I thought that if I ever swore, even saying "hell" while reading out a joke, I would go to hell forever. I believed this until I was 10.

Anon

When i was in juniour high my teacher always told us that if we swore more than 3 times then our tounges would drop off

crying snott

I used to believe everything starting with f was a bad word after I learned about the "f-word".

Sarah

I used to think that the worst thing you could ever say was "fudge buckets", because thats what my mom said when she was really angry instead of swearing in front of us.

gabrielle

My little brother used to love swearing and even got to like the taste of mustard as my mum used it as a punishment for swearing. But when the Beatles single that went "Obladi-Oblada" was in the charts, he took great delight in singing the chorus at the top of his voice, then quickly declaring that it was ok to swear cos he was just singing the song. None of his older brothers and sisters dared to sing along even though we knew he wasn't really saying "bloody"!

Marz Scotland

I worked at a daycare center after school and one day me and another girl who worked there walked into one of the classrooms and saw that the kids had had show and tell earlier that morning, we were asking them all what they brought in. one little boy came right up to us and said 'i brought in a dumb fuck', meaning a dump truck. we both practically fell off our chairs laughing!

tinkerbell

When my little cousin was two, she was the cutest, most innocent-looking child you had ever seen. She was tiny, with blonde hair and blue eyes and a sweet little voice.

Anyway, our aunt was getting married and this old woman came up to my cousin before the wedding, saying "oh, how cute you are, what's your name, sweetie?"

My cousin replied, in her angelic little voice, "f***ie you, bitch." Not so sweet anymore!

Anon

I remember somebody telling me that the C-word was "cent" as in the American coin.
I didn't understand how the Americans could get away with swearing all the time.

Alice in wonderland

When I started 4th grade I didn't know that sticking up your middle finger meant "F**k off". I cut my middle finger on a fork at lunch and it hurt bad and was bleeding. I hopped up holding up my middle finger, not knowing that I was flipping everyone in the caf off. The luch lady came over and told me off.I was in tears by the end and still didn't know what I had done!!!

Becky

when I was little I heard my dad yelling at my uncle (his inlaw) he told him to f**K off. later i asked him what that meant. He told me it meant to go away or something like that. the next day at school my teacher was trying to help me with something I already knew how to do so i was going to ask her to leave then i remembered my dads way of saying that i thought it was the cool way to say it i told her to f**k off and she called my dad he was so embarased

Anon

I once read an article in Readers Digest wherein a teenager referred to all Hispanics as "f..... Puerto Ricans". I did not understand that it was an edited swear word; I thought the person had started to say something rude, then changed his mind and simply said "Puerto Ricans". I thought it was very polite of him to stop himself from swearing, and also pretty funny that he didn't know not all Hispanics come from Puerto Rico.

Nicole

I had an uncle who told me that "pilchards" was a swearword. I heard a presenter use it on a programme about fishing when I was about 6, and ran to tell my mum.
Sometimes I still catch myself using it..

Anon

My little sister used to think Belly button was a swear word. When ever my brother or I said it she would go tell on us.

Bridget

Once at my grandmother's house I was wheeling around a baby doll and kept telling my older brother to try and take it from me, each time he did I smacked his arm and shouted, "GET OFF HIM YOU BASTARD!" not knowing what it meant, grandmom set me straight...

Another one of these stories goes for my cousin. I was in the car with my cousins and my aunt, one of the girls was my age and her brother was a little younger. Out of the blue she hugged him and said, "YOU BASTARD!" she mistook it as a compliment and my mother never looked so stunned (until a few years afterward.)

Jami

When i was little(2-3 yrs)i would hear my parents say "damn it!". i didn't think that made very much sense, because how could you 'damn' something? so i would say 'bam it!'. because at that age it made sense to 'bam' something.

EmmaLee