I didn't teach him that, I swear

We share a little dream, my wife and I. It's that we'll someday have the time and resources to hire a baby sitter every Friday night so we can hop in the car, drive down a country lane, pull over in a discreet location, kick our feet up on the dash, and spend a couple hours fogging up the windows by means of the carefree discharge of swear words.

You know, just take turns letting them fly — all those marvelous words we put into storage on the day our child was born. In our natural states, she and I swear like sailors on shore leave. But we are no longer in our natural states. 
We are parents.

And while my wife at times definitely looks at me in a way that tells me in no uncertain terms that I'm a complete (word beginning with A that denotes the south end of an animal's digestive tract); and while I have been known to look at her like she's a complete (word beginning with B that sometimes describes a female canine), we pretty much have remained faithful to our pact to raise our child in a swear-free home.

But let's be friggin' honest. We're a cursing culture. Always have been.

Which means the day will likely come when, for the first time, our beloved child (whose birth made us weep with the sweet wonder of life itself) will make remarkably efficient use of a swear word (thereby making us weep with dark wonder at what the world is coming to).

Because children learn language like fire trucks handle water  — they suck it in and spit it out -- unless we raised our boy on a strict regimen of 24/7 sensory deprivation (I lobbied for that and lost), for reasons etymologists and psychologists surely can explain, he will discover that the words "doggoneit," "tottering tadpoles" and "pickle sauce" just won't cut it in all situations.

Still, even if most cultural indicators show we are going to (heck) in a handbag, no one will think us square for disallowing our child to swear. Indeed, society still believes we are duty-bound to stop it, curtail it or contain it. And I'm a big fan of society.

But can we? Even the father of our country, George Washington himself, once had to beseech his troops to refrain from "the foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing." Consider that he was dealing with a starved army with frost-bitten feet. You'd think fathers and mothers of mere children have it easier today. Yet while a country's freedom has since been secured, the war on swear words has decidedly become a centuries-long slog.

A mother I know shared some news from the front line of how her 5-year-old daughter last year made a bold sortie into the hitherto unfamiliar airspace of vibrant verbalization. Let's roll the tape:

They were on a Disney Halloween cruise. Her daughter was dressed as Tinkerbell. "She looked lovely, pretty and dainty," her mother recalls.

It was dinner time. The lobby was packed. They were waiting for an elevator. The elevator bell dinged. The doors opened. The elevator was packed. No space left for even a pixie. That's when this child — this sprite from a loving home — said out loud for all to hear, "What the hell?" The mother was mortified.

Of course, her experience feeds the taproot that has kept the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil standing upright throughout the ages. Taboo language  — swearing to be insulting, swearing to be cool, swearing to express frustration, fear or surprise — casts its root system deeply in the home, the playground, movies, film, music, the entire culture. It will not be uprooted. But don't take my word for it.

"All children learn that some words are different than others — that this word is worse than this word," says Timothy Jay, a professor at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and author of Cursing in America and What To Do When Your Kids Talk Dirty. "These words are the only words that, once you learn them, you're not allowed to use them."

These words are the apple on the tree. They will be bitten, swallowed, regurgitated and thereby sown for future generations of wise apples.

Since the dawn of whenever, swearing, says Jay, has been a "human universal," from small tribes to the most civilized societies, from the kickball game to the floor of the U.S. Senate where, you may recall, Vice President Dick Cheney once famously told Sen. Patrick Leahy to "Go (perform a sexual act upon himself that's got to be anatomically impossible)!"

Though music and movies have undoubtedly become more liberal in their use of swearing, says Jay, and though "we might use a little more of it that we did 20 or 30 years ago, we certainly haven't become immune to it."

Key point right there. Swearing is still unacceptable within most places and spaces where civilization has demarcated its property lines.

Which explains why, like Gen. George Washington himself, when I finally hear my son swear, I will calmly tell him to cease "the foolish and wicked practice."

And like Washington, I may or may not be speaking from my high horse.