Mice that ROAR by MOUSE ONE

Mouse One met the World in freshman English Composition. As she settled into class for what should have been an extension in the mechanics of language and expression, she instead encountered revolution.

It was the era of Vietnam, bellbottom jeans, bare midriffs, incense and The Streak. Girls rolled their hair on orange juice cans, and guys sported plaid pants and white ties. The South was despised north of the Mason-Dixon Line, and the air of Yankee superiority was met with an influx of Confederate flags and car tags. Integration was well under way, but the culture shock was well, a shock. A girl on my dorm floor had won a Miss Black Something or Other title and kept her crown on display. Her roommate built a shrine in their room to her cousin. The cousin, she explained, had been killed by a white driver during a demonstration. Meanwhile, some students who couldn’t stand to be associated with The South, attempted to prove their liberalness by perming their hair into Afro styles, throwing away their bras and acquiring a sailor’s vocabulary.

But getting back to English, our plump professor with the blue-white hair could have been everybody’s grandma. Her modest paisley attire denoted good taste. Her dialect was distinctly aristocratic, and her smile was as pleasant as the taste of sweet tea with a twist of lemon. She complimented my sample paragraphs, and the course began with great promise.

So, The Mouse wasn’t too worried about English composition. Her high school teachers had been among the best anywhere. One teacher had even taught in that great, celebrated state of California! He insisted upon perfection. Any mistake – even a manuscript error such as crossing through a word written in ink – had to be repaired on a correction sheet. Some students spent days working on endless correction sheets.

We were also taught that profanities were not proper English. All a profanity showed, the teachers said, was poor vocabulary. Writers who resorted to the dungeon of four-letter words just proved how little they knew the English language. There were thousands of adjectives, adverbs and synonyms that filled dictionaries, thesauruses and vocabulary builders, waiting to be chosen for the perfect fit. And so, we learned spelling words and vocabulary until the day we graduated. Of course, there were some students who tested the rule, and they got to spend their snack break, lunch period or study hall in a reading and vocabulary improvement course. That about ended all bad words in compositions.

Then came college. I carried along my Webster’s Dictionary, Roget’s Thesaurus and synonym books and expected to advance even further in written expression.

But along came the Profanity Brigade. The “brigade” consisted of three female students who freely used four-letter words and more, not only in their compositions but also during class discussion. And the professor – “everybody’s grandma” who appeared ready to pass around cookies and milk -- encouraged them! The professor told the class that these students were unafraid to express how they really felt!

One among The Brigade prepared the rest of us just prior to a presentation. She was about to read her composition aloud when she warned, “All of you who still have virgin ears might want to cover them before I start reading.” Those were her exact words, and I didn’t cover my ears, but after hearing her read, I wish I had.

After a couple of years, Mouse One transferred to a university and took another course in composition. Her professor discouraged the use of shock and awe language, and The Mouse learned more about grammar and style in that course than in all the rest combined. But The Mouse did relent to the effectiveness of the rare four-letter expletive. The conclusion of Gone With the Wind just wouldn’t be the same without the strength of utter apathy in Rhett’s famous last words to Scarlett: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”