We all come from different backgrounds. Some only slightly different, some very different. Mine was a semi-rural environment. I'm reminded of this by the current craze about Trump's 'locker room' talk. To me, this kind of talk, done in places where men gather, is perfectly normal, as is swearing and other rough talk. My life was one of what was considered normal juvenile mayhem. The usual pranks, sneaking smokes, squabbles and drinking. My adult life was one of hard work, outdoor activities like hunting, fishing, heavy drinking and carousing. The people I hung out with lived like that. I fit in well. Sometimes I unthinkingly revert back to all that when I speak, and out comes some swear words I didn't mean to utter. Understand that during the first 5 years of my life, the only father figure I knew was my granddad on my mom's side. My dad was away in the war most of the time until I was 5 years old. My gramps, bless his soul, was a teamster. Not the union kind. A real, horse team driving teamster. During the war years, gas was rationed and some place's used horse teams for some of the work. My gramps's team was one of those. If you were ever around real teamsters very long, you heard some of the best swearing ever invented. And, so I learned from the best. One thing though. I never hit a woman, nor went to jail. That's two things. I was never good at math either. Three things.
I've probably done a lot of stupid things over my lifetime, but one that stemmed from curiosity was the time I reached all of the way up the wall (somehow, because I was pretty short) and flipped off the switch to the furnace, in the middle of Winter, in New England. My parents were frantic, thinking the furnace had broken, and trying to figure out how to come up with funds and get someone out to fix it. I guess eventually they thought to make sure that the switch hadn't been flipped, and sure enough, it had been...by me. I don't know if they thought of that on their own, or when they called a company that was something suggested by the repair place. It was a really stupid thing for me to do, but also something that seems pretty natural to a curious kid.