I know this will sound insane to some of you, but I fully intend to swear around my kid.

Not constantly, mind you. I don’t swear constantly now, though when I’m angry I do tend to slip the f-word into my rants as both adjective and noun, and when people really annoy me, I tend to call them either a four-letter word starting with “t” or a 10-letter killer beginning with “c.”

All three are on George Carlin‘s still-relevant list of the “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” or the “Seven Dirty Words,” as the routine is often referred to. Carlin, long a hero of mine, died Sunday at 71, and though I can think of many critic-like things to say at a time like this (go find a copy of Class Clown, pronto!), I’m having a hard time expressing how down his passing has me.

See, there have been five profound influences on what I do and how I think: Robert Altman, Robert Christgau, Pauline Kael, Elvis Costello … and George Carlin. Now, ironically, the death of someone who probably had more to do with my love of words and wordplay than anyone else has left me speechless.

Well, not entirely … What I remember most of all right now is Carlin’s convincing argument that there are no “bad words.”

It’s a sometimes overlooked part of his monologue, just before he reveals the Filthy 7: “Be careful with words. The same words that hurt can heal. It’s a matter of how you pick them.

“There are some people who aren’t into all the words. There are some people that would have you not use certain words. There are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven of them you can’t say on television. What a ratio that is! 399,993 … to seven. They must reallllly be baaaad. They must be outrageous to be separated from a group that large. (Hear drill sergeant voice:) ‘All of you over here … you seven! Baaaad worrrrrds.’

“That’s what they told us they were, remember? (Hear nagging mother voice:) ‘That’s a bad word!’

“Mehhhh. No bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad intentions. And worrrrrds.”

I’ve always thought to refuse those seven words — or any curse words, for that matter — is irrational. Leaning how and when to best apply those words — how to respect their power, their ability to wound, their ability to perfectly sum up anger and frustration, and how to recognize when they’re being overused — that’s what I want my son to learn.

And it’s my firm belief that you can’t learn that unless you’re exposed to those words, and without the fretful do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do shielding most parents put around them.

If I let the s-word or the f-word or the g-word slip around my kid when I didn’t intend to … just as those words crept into family conversations around me when I was a boy … or were spat out on playgrounds by the time I was in the third grade … or how I came to know more of them from listening to Carlin’s records when I wasn’t supposed to … whenever Sam encounters them, I’ll do my damnedest to explain to him when it’s appropriate to say those words, and when it’s better to leave them alone.

When those words will land him in detention, for instance, or get a stern warning from his mother — and when they might get a hearty laugh out of one of his granddads. When it’s OK to say them around the house, and why he’d best watch his tongue most everywhere else. When and how they can really add some zing to what you mean, and when dropping a barrage of them is just stupidly gratuitous.

Maybe I’m being naive here. But the way I see it, discriminating against words is just a stone’s throw away from discriminating against a great many other things — people’s religion of choice, for instance, or the color of their skin, or the body type or sexual orientation. I want to raise Sam to have tolerance in his heart and fearlessness in his soul, with a pursuit of wisdom joining the two together.

And if along the way I tell him he’s an f’ing great kid in front of the PTA board, well, so be it.

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