Words have power ... and other thoughts

I distinctly remember the first time I heard the “F” word.

We were driving from Texas City to Longview on the dreaded U.S. 59 in my mom’s white, two-door Oldsmobile Cutlass. I was 8. My dad, his head turned 90 degrees to the right due to dysplasia/spasmodic torticollis, was in the passenger seat. Mom was driving.

These were the days when the speed limit had just been lowered and my mother — never a rule breaker — kept the needle neatly positioned between the 5 and the 5.

As frequently happens on long trips on divided four-lane highways, we played a slight game of tag with another car. We passed it, it passed us, and so on. I’m sure the driver in the other car had to be a little freaked out by the fact that, every time we passed, my dad was staring at him — involuntarily — through the passenger side window.

Suddenly and without warning, I heard my dad explode with a resounding “F--- you too, buddy!”

I asked my mom what the word meant, parroting what my dad had said, of course. She said it was a word that only adults use, and then only infrequently. Giving my dad the stare down while somehow simultaneously looking at the road and in the rearview mirror, she proceeded to explain that it was a word I should never choose, especially in anger.

“We’ve taught you better than that,” she said.

The lesson from this experience: The word itself is not what’s important, but the tone of your voice matters. I didn’t understand at the time that my dad was hurt and he lashed out. The other driver had no idea the kind of pain that he was in, no idea how embarrassed/emasculated he might have felt thanks to an insidious disease that would affect him for the rest of his life.

Over the years, since becoming a writer/editor in my own right, I’ve learned to love and respect the power of words, More important, I’ve tried to dissect and learned to appreciate the tone my voice has when I choose to use words in a certain way.

If I’m truly angry, I don’t use profanity. I don’t want people to get hung up on a particular word choice and use that as an excuse to not listen. Deep in my heart, I wish that others would choose words as carefully and listen when others with dissenting opinions are talking.

But my fear is listening has become a lost art.