Up until Thursday morning, I considered myself a relatively law-abiding citizen.

Relatively because last week I was thinking about what to cook for dinner and drove through a red light, realizing it only when the truck that was attempting to turn into my path (so he had the green light!) honked at me. He honked politely…this is Fuquay-Varina, after all.

OK, so Thursday morning I’m drinking coffee and reading the paper when I see that a man was arrested for cussing! I spat my coffee onto the front page, sputtering, “Holy s***!”

I mean, calmly declaring, “Oh my goodness!” I am so busted. My kids have reached the age where I don’t even spend that much time worrying about what I say in front of them. The other day I was playing golf with the sweetest Southern lady you could ever meet. Her last name is one of those “old Fuquay” names that they name streets after. She’s been playing golf longer than I’ve been alive. And I missed a short putt for par.

I’m surprised the cops didn’t spring out from the trees surrounding the green. It just slipped out. It slipped out because it’s been allowed to run free for so long that it doesn’t know when to restrain itself. It’s a BAD WORD! (Little joke: Why is it called golf? Because all the other four-letter words were taken.)

Did you ever wonder who got to decide what constitutes a “bad word?” Many of the bad words from my childhood are now regular fare on 8 p.m. TV shows. One time a friend’s kid was at my house. My son was whining about something and I good-naturedly said, “Rory, you are a pain in the butt!” The other child said, “Butt is a bad word.” I brightly responded, “Not in our house, it isn’t!”

But seriously, the rules keep changing. My son told me that if a student pronounces that far flung planet’s name with the emphasis on the second syllable and pronounced with a long “A,” they can get sent to ISS (in school suspension for those who are still in the time-out stage.) In case it’s not clear, I’m talking about Uranus (insert giggle if you mentally pronounced it to sound like a reference to a body part). There was never any question as to how it was pronounced when I was growing up and saying it now would result in consequences, and maybe even arrest!!!

And then there is the foulest of all curses. Sh*t Up. I can’t even spell it out here in a family newspaper. I have seen parents who don’t even blink if their kids says that word whose homonym is that thing that beavers build, but if they dare utter “Sh*t Up!” they are sternly reprimanded or sent to their rooms.

What is a Mom to do? I guess for me it comes down to two choices. I either have to give up golf or find a good lawyer.

Di appears every Saturday on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Di at Live and Let Di.