Fuck.
Fuck is my favourite word.
Growing up in a dysfunctional family living on various Canadian Armed Forces Bases across Canada I learnt the arts of the profanities at a young age.
And of course the word “fuck” was one of the first words that I used with any type of proficiency.
It didn’t take long for me to work up to “fuck off”, “fuck you”, “get fucked”.
I could even sing along with Gary Lee & the Showdown’s “The Rodeo Song” when a couple of the boys from the Canadian Airborne Regiment were playing the song one evening at the base auto club when my father was working on his car.
Fuck was an empowering word, I wished that I had used “fuck you”and “fuck off” on Canadian Forces Base Namao more frequently. Maybe the babysitter and Captain McRae would have found me too unappealing.
When I’d get into fist fights with the other brats on base I always found that my punches were able to land just a little harder with the profanities. And conversely when I got the shit kicked out of me by my father or the other brats on base the profanities would ease the pain away.
In 2013 I had gone up to see Scott over the summer. We stopped for coffee at a coffee shop on the east side of Edmonton. We were sitting there for about 10 minutes when this elderly gent came over and asked Scott and I to stop with the swearing as he’d never heard two people swear so much.
Swearing was baked into our vocabulary.
Sure, the Canadian Armed Forces will bend over backwards to portray the military communities on base to be right out of Mayberry. But back in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s the PMQs were full of angry alcoholics, some with untreated CPTSD / PTSD. Fuck, CFB Shearwater had a “Battered Wives Club”……
The whole fucking community was full of testosterone, alcohol, anger, and untreated mental illness. So yeah, kids from the junior ranks and non-commissioned side of the base were usually rough ‘n’ tumble.
Beeshive 