I am lying on my couch, scratching myself in the middle of the day. Somewhere, a junior assistant is photocopying a dossier. Somewhere, a bus boy is wiping down a table. Somewhere, a teacher is reprimanding their student.

 

But right here, I am thirsty.

 

I turn to my ten year-old cousin, Petty O, staring at the television. “Hey, little girl, go get me a glass of water. With ice. And make it fast. I’m thirsty.”

 

If her looks could kill, I’d be mutilated right now. She replies: “Are you fracking kidding me?”

 

“Excuse me?”

”I said,” she repeats, louder: “Are…you…fracking…kidding…me?”

Athena has been watching Battlestar Galactica with my sister, Staplez, and me. She doesn’t like the show, but her other option is reading, and she hates reading. She tells us so: “I hate reading.” We believe her.

So she watches Galactica with us, which is on the Sci-Fi network, where they can’t curse. Instead, they’ve made up a word, frack, which takes the place of the real f-word.

 

Frack you.

What the frack?

And, of course, Are you fracking kidding me?

I turn to Staplez, who is a social worker, and by all implications, the moral compass of our family: “Can Petty use the word frack?”

 

Staplez takes a minute to think about it. She doesn’t want Petty cursing, I mean, she’s only ten. That would be wrong.

 

“Um,” Staplez decides, “it’s not actually a real word, so I guess why not.”

”It’s not a real word? Are you sure?”

”It’s been made up for a television show, which is fiction. It’s definitely not a real word.”

”Even if it’s specifically used only to specifically replace a very real and very bad word?”

“Even then. I guess she can say it all she wants.”

In that case, I turn to Petty, still thirsty, still lying on the couch and say to her: “Get your fracking lazy butt up, and pout me a glass of fracking water, before I kick you out of my fracking house and into the fracking street.”

 

Petty gets up begrudgingly. Pours me the water. Brings it to me, and says: “Here you go, you fracking highness.”

And it’s OK, because frack isn’t a real word.