Column: Suckitude

Hello all,
It's been a while since I made any rants. It's partly because I was busy, partly because I was discouraged by the lack of readership, but mostly because I ran out of things to talk about. You try thinking up 52 cogent, interesting things to write, THEN, mebbe you can tell me to quit my whining, and suck it up.

Which smoothly transitions into what I'm going to talk about today. Warning: The rest of this essay is filled with bad words. Please do not read this while in the presence of little children, more specifically, literate children. This four-letter word has been subject of many a debate and has gotten me on the bad list of one of my pastors. The word is

Suck

As a kid, teenager, and yes, even in adulthood, I've always used the word "suck" in my vocabulary. This food sucks. This game sucks. It sucks. That sucks. And it's not like I'm using the word in place of other words, similar to heck, dang, or hockey puck. I'm not using it in a sexual manner either. How can algebra suck anything? It's not alive! So, for me, I just consider it as another way of saying something blows --err-- is bad, not in that 80's, Michael Jackson bad, but terrible. Stinks. Hurls.

So, how I got on the bad list, was that I was writing an email to a mailing list, which happened to have the pastor on it as well. It didn't matter to me, I'm a good clean-mouthed kid, or so I thought. I think I wrote about how something DOESN'T suck, and within 10 minutes, an email was sent to the ENTIRE mailing list, not just to me, from the pastor, detailing how I should watch what I say, and to not use offensive language in Church. To say I was surprised, was definitely an understatement. I was outraged. It's just a word! And it's not a bad word. This incident brought me back to when I was in Kindergarten and I was benched for saying "Black Hole" (I think I mentioned this story once, but I'm too lazy to look it up). I was so ready to fire off an reply, and to quit the list, never to write there again.

Well, this happened about 4 or 5 years ago. However, this problem, like Jaws and zits, has resurfaced. At church, I was talking with some friends, who happened to be parents and they were telling me about a problem one of the kids was having. Naturally concerned for the young child's welfare, I asked them what was wrong? One of them explained that their precious innocent child has started to use bad words. Mortified and utterly repulsed by such a notion, I asked which bad words? And then, that's when my idea of this kid swearing like a sailor got destroyed. He said the word, "Suck". Biting back the sigh of relief, I proceeded to argue with him...politely, of course.

According to him, whether the use of the word, "suck" is bad or not is all determined by the context. Which strangely enough, was my argument. However, in his point of view, the context is that any time the word describes something negative, then it's a bad word. So, when his child says something like, "School sucks!" Then, this is a bad word. But if the child were to say, "I need a straw to suck the juice" then, it's ok. I, of course, disagree. Saying something sucks in a negative way is similar to saying something is bad. For example, is it all right for someone to say, "Math stinks"? Stink in this case is used negatively as well, meaning in effect, I hate math. It's exactly the same way as the word, "suck". The context behind me saying "Math sucks" is equivalent to saying Math stinks. That is all. You can't say that stink is ok to say, but suck is not. That doesn't make sense.

Now, if I were to use the word suck in a sexual way, then yes, I can see where that becomes a bad word. But I doubt a little kid, six or seven years old knows that. And I'm pretty sure, he didn't use it in that context. Oh well, that's my feeling on the subject. What do you think? And don't quote me the Bible where it says, something about do not let unclean words come out. I agree with that. My argument/confusion is in what is considered unclean words? Describing the hatred you feel for a subject, a thing (NOT a person), I feel is ok. It's not unclean. But it's when talking about people, my brothers and sisters, Christian and Non, that's when words can become unclean.