Back when I was in first grade, I remember walking to Party City with my babysitter’s super-cool 5th-grade daughter to get some candy. I forgot what we were talking about exactly, but she brought up, “Do you know what ‘bitch’ means?” “No…” I said, and listened as she bestowed her 5th-grade wisdom upon me.

I think for most of my life, cussing seemed to be the cool thing to do. I would feel powerful, mature, and rebellious whenever these too-cool-for-school words left my lips. By high school, I was using “fuck” and every conjugation of it possible to express even my slightest frustrations. Even to my friends, I would say “fuck you” whenever I got irritated, albeit more often jokingly than not.

By college, I’ve tried to tone down my cussing, but this past summer in Uganda, I realized I was saying “fuck” more and more again. Living there was frustrating, but I still had no reason to cuss at every single inconvenience. I’ve been told that it’s very easy to fall into a cussing habit when the people around you cuss, and I agree. Especially on a college campus, cuss words just seem so much more innocuous since they get casually tossed out all the time. But in the end, debemos recordar que las palabrotas can and will corrupt a person, so let’s not cuss =)

The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks. -Luke 6:45