I’ve never been a big fan of the word. It hurts the ears to hear it. But that she said it in coversation - whatever. It’s okay with me. There are a lot worse things going on in the media. A slang word for vagina shouldn’t be the worst!

When I hear the amount of profanity used by kids today, youngsters 12 years old and younger, it was a shock at first. Children are using words whose meanings I didn’t learn until high school.

But the bigger problem is a kind of Orwellian reduction in vocabulary they impose on themselves. You’ll remember that 1984’s government disarmed the people reducing their vocabulary. There was no longer a “good-better-best,” there was only “good” and “double good,” “ungood,” “double ungood,” etc.

When kids insist on using the f-word to replace good, better, best, bad, ugly, fly, fantastic, and so on, they deprive the f-word of its emotional power and, indeed, of any meaning at all that can’t be conveyed with tone of voice. And since most of the time the f-word can’t be used in writing, they cut themselves off from learning a thousand real words.

Perhaps worst of all, they have no idea that they are “untraining” themselves for their future success.

If Tom Hanks wants to appear in The Vagina Monologues, be interviewed about it and make a slip of the um, (tongue just seems so wrong here) lip, I’ll cut him some slack, too.

You’re right, words are very powerful. Perhaps even more so when they “invade” our home during a family time.

Drew