By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Columnist

I sometimes swear a little. Well, OK, a lot.

After years of practice, I can smoothly blend ordinarily harmless words with colorful descriptions of bodily functions and the people who perform them.

But I have daughters. Their delicate ears need to be protected. So I have had to watch what I say.

Or so I thought.

When I became a father 10 years ago, I went cold turkey and stopped swearing at home. Sort of.

There were limits: If I stubbed my toe, I swore at the cats or the car, sometimes the heavens above, and sometimes my toe.

Anyway, my restraint reinforced a long-held belief that swearing helps define the difference between the sexes.

Boys are supposed to, girls aren't.

The concept surfaced the other day when my oldest daughter started saying "crap." I felt a rush of fatherly pride.

Although it's hardly worth including in the Potty Mouth Dictionary, it has a gruff, guy-like quality. When she started saying it, I thought: Do I confine her to her room or pat her on the back?

I was younger than she was when I uttered my first curse. I don't recall my father scolding me when the parents of my elementary schoolmates complained.

But my mother didn't like it much. (And this from a woman who could heap more verbal abuse at a golf ball than dockworkers greeting scabs at a picket line.)

I didn't do anything, in my daughter's case. In fact, I probably made things worse. I started telling my oldest daughter, before her Saturday-morning soccer games, that she should go out and kick some "backside," only not exactly in those words.

And I told her not take any "crap" from other players, only not in those words.

This went over very well.

To put this in context, you need to know that both my daughters rarely behave in a dainty manner. They're not tomboys, just a little ... different.

Neither will hesitate to rank, like judges at an ice skating competition, a dinner-table belch — even one made by an embarrassed guest. And they have no aversion to slipping a fake rubber pile of "crap" into your shoe, under your pillow or into your lunchbox.

But does letting them say "crap" eventually turn the little darlings into foul-mouthed louts? Or will this give their evolving personalities verbal armor to use when they do battle in a male-dominated world?

I haven't found an answer yet, even though I now realize that being the father of girls more and more puts me at odds with myself.

The guy things I like are not always things I want them to see — and sometimes say. At least not yet.

And there are worse things out there than a four-letter word. I feel I should protect them from violent or explicit movies before I should have to shield them from foul language.

When they find me watching a movie where guns are blazing or dinosaurs are eating commuters, I hit the remote and we're all watching kid-friendly TV.

Now let me tell you, that's real crap.

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8012.