The Meaning of Fuck

Want to hear another little story about M? Gather 'round, kids.

I was a very innocent child. Sheltered even. My head was not polluted with ugly thoughts or words or fears. Well, at least not until one day.

I was probably five years old, which would make M seven. We were playing outside with a bunch of neighbourhood kids, some who were boys. It was one of those carefree summer days of sliding down the wet banana and playing tag. The sun shining, the birds singing, all that crap.

But suddenly, it all changed. One of the neighbourhood boys, M's friend Eric N, said the queen mother of all swears: Fuck. A hush went over the children (quite a feat, since it takes a lot to shut up kids). "M," I asked, wide-eyed and serious. "What does that word mean?"

M's expression grew grim, like a mother telling her child the truth about Santa. "Come here," she said, and led me behind our brown Chevrolet station wagon. We crouched down by the licence plate and I still remember the the crunch of driveway gravel beneath my flip flops.

"Fuck is a very bad word," M said. "And you should never say it."

"But why? What does it mean?" I asked.

M sighed, as if all the world's truths were about to come spilling from her mouth. "It means," she said with a dramatic pause." A man's bum crack."

That moment is the cause of my current inability to make decisions, my fickle nature, and my bi-annual existential crises. Because, you see, M never explained further, but I had so many questions. How was a boy's bum crack different from a girl's bum crack? And what was so horrible about bum cracks that they became the word that should never be uttered? Bum cracks were funny, weren't they? Apparently not. Apparently, the time my friend Bobby P's swimshorts came down a bit after doing a cannonball in the pool, I had seen his "fuck." And I would never be the same.

It took several years before I learned the true meaning of the word. And when I did, well, that's another story.