What do most of us think about, when we think about love? No, not a Raymond Carver short story, however intriguing were his musings on relationships. I think when most of us think about love, and all the entrapments of that fickle emotion, clichés pop into our heads. When we’re young, we envision passionate kisses, dizzying emotions, even the uneasiness of unrequited desire. With maturity comes wisdom, and our slightly-more-advanced selves can accept that even the most frenzied romantic love, if nourished with enough affection and shared purpose, has the capacity to ripen into a secure and long-lasting partnership.

If we’re lucky, we retain some of the passion that ignited our union in the first place. If we’re really lucky, the arrival of children teaches us that love requires equal parts patience, self-sacrifice and surrender. And if we’re really, really lucky … //READ MORE

Remember the Reginald Rose play Twelve Angry Men? Well, I’ve decided to write a new stage production called Twelve Spastic Kindergartners. It’s not about a murder-trial jury, but rather a roster of kids at a birthday party. A party during which the guests and 6-year-old host cause mayhem in a new house, the birthday boy gets away with murder, and somehow the parents are sentenced to three hours of floor scrubbing and permanent ringing in their ears. It’s full of more drama and intrigue than the original production, with the added action of dinosaur-mauling and kung-fu fighting. … //READ MORE

Ladies, I have news. I have fallen helplessly in love. The object of my affection is a 26-year old with great legs, who is sometimes low-key and occasionally high strung. During the past three months I’ve wanted to be at his side constantly, and he’s happily obliged. No, I haven’t fallen in love with an Ashton Kutcher lookalike, but rather with the used Baldwin upright that’s been sitting in my living room since August. I’m smitten.

I actually fell for this piano decades ago, before I even had it in my possession. Since I was a little girl, I had wanted to play. I asked my parents for lessons, but they couldn’t afford them, and they certainly couldn’t come up with the cash for a piano. Then, as the years went by, I swore I would learn on my own, but somehow it never happened. I blamed the lack of time. The lack of money. The fact that, no matter how hard I practiced, it was just too late to get to Carnegie Hall. So I lived my musical life inside my head, because, well, … //READ MORE

I don’t know about you, but I have never worn perfume. For one thing, I have no idea how to select one. And for another, I hate the thought of shelling out $120 for two ounces of Chanel No. 5, Carolina Herrera 212 or Snoop Dogg—err Snoop Lion 69. OK, I just made up that last one, but it’s probably just a matter of time before Snoop (now Snoopzilla?) actually does launch his own fragrance.

But I digress. This story is not about perfume, but about what happens at the perfume counter. So one day not so long ago, I go a moderately upscale department store to buy a birthday present for a single friend. This friend is a girly girl, someone whose bedroom is more of a budoir, complete with a plush headboard and, on her bureau, all sorts of pretty potions arranged on a delicate glass tray. I cannot relate to that, because since having kids the most prominent decorative accents in my bedroom are stray Legos and mounds of laundry. But my friend likes to wear this particular fragrance, so I figure this gift is a no-brainer. I bring my 5-year-old son along and plop him down on one of those tall, revolving stools that overlook the cosmetics counter. He’s a pretty well-behaved kid, but as soon as he sees … //READ MORE

My husband is a risk-taker. He’s not the kind of person who’ll bet against the stock market or jump out of an airplane, mind you. He takes small, everyday risks that usually don’t result in bodily injury or catastrophe, but can turn out to be a magnificent pain in the ass.

For instance, he seems to enjoy riding around in a car equipped with less than a hundredth of a tank of gas. No, he’s not pulling a Richie Cunningham, conniving to run out of fuel so we’ll be forced to pull over to the side of the road and neck. (We should only be so randy these days.) It’s just that he honestly doesn’t get supremely worried about anything until sirens go off and lights flash around him. As it often happens, I’m nervously pointing at the fuel indicator that’s edging toward “Empty,” begging him to find a gas station, and he’s telling me to relax, because “we can still go at least 12 miles before we run out.” It’s like fighting about money, sex, or the status of the toilet seat lid … //READ MORE

I have to admit, since moving to the West Coast I miss cursing a little bit. The Big Apple is the swearing capital of the world, and I think New Yorkers find it cathartic to spew profanity on the gritty streets of the ballsiest city in the world. Swearing is such a crucial part of New York culture, right up there with bagels and egg creams, and the F word, especially, has become essential to the New York City vernacular. A glimpse into the typical New Yorker’s work day:

On the daily commute: “Watch where you’re going, motherf—–!”

Analyzing problems: “There’s no way outta this one. We’re totally f—ed.”

Unwinding after work: “You wouldn’t believe the f—ing day I had!”

After getting my journalism degree, I was excited to work at a newspaper, because I’d romanticized those stories about foul-mouth reporters working into the wee hours of the night in cigar-smoke-filled newsrooms, and celebrating a big story at the tavern down the street. My luck, as soon as I got a job, cigarettes, three-martini lunches and office hookups were replaced by salad bars, Diet Coke and bi-annual sexual harassment seminars. However, the cursing, although not as prevalent as it had been in the His Girl Friday days, remained intact.

The best example of New Yorkers’ penchant for profanity is when, a couple weeks after 9/11, the fearless editors of The Onion printed the only headline that could match the intensity of those unthinkable atrocities. The words, in bold-faced caps, sat atop a photo of the United States engulfed in flames, overlaid with crosshairs:

“HOLY F—— SH–” (And they didn’t replace the letters with dashes.)

Like New Yorkers, writers understand that profanity is sometimes the most accurate form of expression. Sometimes their raw prose is lauded, but other times it is criticized for being uncreative. Writer Kathryn Schulz recently defended the practice of using swear words in literature with her “Ode to a Four-Letter Word” in New York Magazine. She wrote, “Writers don’t use expletives out of laziness or the puerile desire to shock or because we mislaid the thesaurus. We use them because, sometimes, the four-letter word is the better word—indeed, the best one.”

Apparently author Adam Mansbach thought the F word was the best choice for his best-selling picture book, Go the F*** to Sleep. A play on Goodnight Moon, this book is not intended as a bedtime story for children, but as comic relief for bleary-eyed parents struggling with the challenges of getting some grown-up time at night. Even better than reading Mansbach’s hilarious lyrics is listening to the audio version of Go the F*** to Sleep, narrated by actor Samuel L. Jackson. What a hoot to hear the bad-ass assassin from Pulp Fiction recite lines such as this, with lullaby music in the background:

Telling us kids to “go the f— to sleep” isn’t something my parents would’ve done when we were little, but I wouldn’t have put it past my grandma. Nanny thought it was OK to sling all the affanculos she wanted because she was swearing in Italian—an indecipherable dialect, no less—and therefore it didn’t count. There was one particular curse phrase she’d use repeatedly, the way one would tell someone to “Go to hell,” but nobody knew what she was truly saying. It wasn’t until my sister’s Italian-born boyfriend overheard her one day and went pale. He pulled us aside and informed us that our innocent-looking grandma was instructing people to sodomize themselves. Cover your ears, people, Nanny’s in da house!

Since moving to San Francisco and having kids happened for me around the same time, I pretty much went cold turkey on the swearing. I avoid cursing in front of my kids, with the recent exception of calling a driver who cut me off a “banana ass” (thanks for that clever phrase, Aunt Joanie), and I usually remember not to use any profanity while talking to my peace-loving, yoga-practicing San Francisco friends. But every now and then, my inner Snooki will emerge.

Like this morning. I had waited 10 minutes for the elevator in a department store, and when it finally arrived I graciously let everyone out before even thinking about going in. But as the last person was exiting, the doors began to close and no one inside the elevator made an attempt to keep them open for me. A second before the doors completely shut, I yelled, “Godamnit!” The way the people around me looked at me, you’d have thought I’d stripped my clothes off and pulled out a handgun.

So these days I’m “irritated” instead of “pissed off.” I am “unlucky,” instead of “shit out of luck.” And “in trouble,” rather than “royally screwed.” It’s not so much fun to be ladylike, is it?

And it’s interesting that my kids, now 8 and 6, can’t even identify the “bad” words. Sure, my son has once or twice yelled “Jesus Christ!” or “Godamnit” after stepping on a Lego or dropping his ice cream, but haven’t we all? My daughter, at age 8, hasn’t even come close to forcing me to wash her mouth out with soap. In fact, after school one day she told me how kids in her class were debating what the “F word” means. She said with a snicker, “Mom, I think I know what the word is…Fart!” She was so proud of herself for figuring it out that I didn’t have the heart to tell her she still has a lot to learn. Maybe we should do a mother-and-daughter weekend in the South Bronx.

Meanwhile, the other day during a group playdate, one of my friend’s kids got angry at his sister and blurted out that she was an “ass—-” My friend, in a move worthy of an Olympic sporting event, quickly grabbed him and put her hand over his mouth so that he never completed the word. But we all knew what he was going for. And I hate to say it, but instead of being shocked, I laughed with relief. There just might be hope for this generation after all.

That’s all I have to say on the topic of swearing. Thanks for reading. But don’t even think about logging off until you leave a fucking comment.

[This article was previously published as part of the “Lady and a Red Typewriter” column in 2011.)