Cussing in the Choir

In view of a certain controversy I unwittingly spawned this week, it seemed appropriate to revisit the occasion in my childhood when I heard a particular word for the very first time. For those unfamiliar with the sweet cadences of southern accents, I have included subtitles. In the fall of my ninth year, the Baptist Church I attended started a “Patch the Pirate Club.” This was not, as you might think, an attempt to reach out to the gay and leather communities of Middle Georgia. “The Patch the Pirate Club” was a children’s choir curriculum based on the inspirational adventures of Patch the Pirate and his rollicking crew of Christian buccaneers, including Peewee Pirate, Sissy Seagull and Wally the Whale. Evidently untroubled by the tensions involved in the notion of Christian piracy, Patch and his gang spent their days singing infectious little songs about virtue. Some of my favorites were “I Love Broccoli” – which I once performed as a duet at a talent show for homeschoolers – and “I Pledge My Heart to America,” a stirring anthem to Peewee Pirate’s decision to crash a hot air balloon, Kamikaze-style, into a dirigible which was about to destroy the Statue of Liberty. (In the end, he didn’t have to because the Nazis or Communists piloting the dirigible were so moved by his attempted sacrifice that they pledged their own hearts to America right there on the spot.) In real life, Patch the Pirate was a Baptist minister who lost his eye to cancer. On his first Sunday back in the pulpit, sans eye and plus patch, a cheeky youngster yanked on his blazer and asked, “Say, are you a pirate?” With admirable charity, Patch replied, “Why, yes I am.” Thus a legend was born. Our Patch the Pirate club met once a week to learn inspirational new songs and to be better pirates of the cross. We even got to wear billowy white shirts and red sashes. One week I ended up sitting next to Jay Smucker. Together with our fellow shipmates, we belted out yet another inspirational favorite. But something was troubling Jay. Brow furrowed over his thick glasses, all at once he leaned over and said in an earnest whisper, “Dijjuw heeyer whuht Mork Wawluhbee cawled Mehtchull Mack-Cou?” [“Did you hear what Mark Walaby called Mitchell McCou?”] “Naw,” I replied. “Hee cawled heeyim a ‘EFF-YOU-SEE-KAY FUHACE’” [“He called him a ‘F-U-C-K Face.’”] Jay went on, his already magnified eyeballs rendered planetary by the sheer evil of Mark Walaby. I was nonplussed. Given that Mark Walaby was the culprit, I knew whatever had been said must be a manifestation of sheer evil, but further than that I could not penetrate. I spelled the word aloud to myself: “eff-you-see-kay.” I rolled it around in my head. I had never heard it before. “Whuhts wrawng withayutt?” [What’s wrong with that?] I asked. “WHUHTS WRAWNG WITHAYUTT?!” Jay shot back, obviously stunned at this gaping lacuna in my moral education. Although he had raised his voice almost to a scream nobody noticed because the other young pirates continued their rollicking inspirational favorites at several hundred decibels per second. Unaccustomed to standing at the receiving end of such outrage, I stood my ground: “Yeah, whuhts wrawng withayut?” Now Jay was nonplussed. He blinked, causing a momentary eclipse of his twin planets. That Richard Christopher, the son of a minister, did not grasp the badness of Mark's verbal display cut him to the quick. “Brothers and sisters,” his gaping stare seemed to say, “this ought not so to be.” In answer to my question, he could but shake his head and mutter “Hee cawled heeyim a eff-you-see-kay fuhace! I mean, hee cawled heeyim a eff-you-see-kay fuhace!” For my part, I took advantage of the roaring pirates to explore the sonic potential of this new word. “Fuhuck fahace,” I intoned: “Saunds lick duhuck fahace.” [“Sounds like duck face.”] Amused by the rhyme, I chanted “fuhuck fahace, fuhuck fahace, quack, quack, quack.” Jay shot me a look of purest horror. “Yoower gawnda gittin saw muhuch truhubble.” [“You are going to get in so much trouble.”] He never sat by me again. PS. Oh, it took almost twenty years, but Jay was vindicated . . . “eff-you-see-kay” finally got me in trouble just this week.