!@#!@#!#%%!

One of the weirdest letters to have been published in The Straits Times in recent memory was in last Tuesday’s paper. Here’s what it read (source here):

July 14, 2009
Horrified by many profanities in matinee show on NS life

I ATTENDED the matinee show Own Time Own Target at the Drama Centre in the National Library building over the weekend. One magazine lauded it as a ‘laugh out loud, rediscovery of zany side of national service’. I presumed this meant it was a family-type show and took my two teenage sons, aged 16 and 14, to the show on the premise of a MediaCorp-owned magazine review.

To my horror, I was cringing uncomfortably in my seat the whole show, highly disturbed by the language used. I do not have a problem that the language was coarse and in dialects. But it was offensive when every sentence and curse uttered by the officers (rightly or wrongly, provoked or otherwise) at the NS boys in the drama was a profanity of the female genitals.

The show was a full house, with young and old, males and females equally represented. I am sure I was not the only one who was disturbed by the excessive cursing and swearing by the officers at the recruits. My observation was that people laughed out loud not at the clumsiness of the recruits but mostly because they felt uncomfortable with the profanities.

As a mother, I find it hard to imagine that after years of sheltered school life where students are taught values, to be gentlemanly and polite and respect their elders, these boys have to do NS run by officers who do not blink an eye when they curse their mother, sister, girlfriend and the whole female population by way of conversation.

My boys were shocked to realise that NS is a rite of passage where they will be officially subjected to bullying, shouting and cursing – nothing gentlemanly at all.

If this is a light-hearted look at life of NS boys during basic military training, I fear to know what my boys will face in their real-life situation when they enlist. Please, someone, assure me this is not so.

Wee Hua Boey (Mdm)

So this is going to be a blog post about profanity:)

The online reaction to Mdm. Wee’s letter hasn’t been all that surprising. Very few if any at all persons have been sympathetic. Of everyone else, I’m guessing half are chastising Mdm. Wee for having quite an incorrect expectation of what soldiering involves, and the other half are wondering whether Mdm. Wee’s letter was intended as a joke.

Here’s the thing: soldiers curse. Everywhere, and its not just a Singapore thing. Nor is it a 2009 thing.

I’m guessing there’re a lot of reasons for soldiers cursing and swearing since time in memorial. Occasionally, the curses and swearing come about from your commanders who need to ‘impress’ upon you the urgency or importance of a task at hand (“Wake up your !@#!!! idea!!!”), and other times, it’s an expression you make to your peers as a response to a situation (“This is a !@#!@#!@# mess!”)

Whichever reason it is, soldiering is a serious business, the more so the waging of war if it ever comes to that (touch wood). When bullets are flying above your head (if ever) and there’s a chance that one of those has your name on it, will you be all nice, polite and gentlemanly to make a point?

“My dear squad-mate, could you kindly toss the grenade as far as you can so that the enemy can be hurt, and won’t shoot at us anymore?”

or

“THROW THE ****ing THING and KILL THOSE $$$$!!!!!*****”

And peace time training is supposed to simulate war time operations, with context, the physical and mental environments being among them.

—

When I was doing my NS fulltime so many donkey years ago, there was profanity going around. The profanity level was at its highest as a new recruit. I remember my ‘Encik’ – Senior Non-Commissioned Officer – being especially… colorful, and he had a way of fitting in genitalia terms into every possible sentence, even when he was talking about food.

I never felt that the language was intended to be taken personally, even when he was screaming at my recruit platoon for not jumping / running / walking / marching fast enough. I think the terms used was simply a way of emphasizing a point of activity. So, yes initially some of that swearing did unsettle a couple of us, but we got over it quickly.

And what’s even more interesting is that as I progressed from recruit to vocation training and then finally was posted to my permanent unit, the swearing got far less. Oh, there were still the occasional F*** bombs now and then, but there were very few soldiers around me who were cursing with the same intensity as during that three months of recruit training.

And during my last Reservist training stint, the number of times I heard someone curse was, I don’t know, maybe just twice in the more than 2 weeks I was in-camp. And no bodily terms were used.

So, things aren’t really that bad. And even for the brief period where there is a lot of it going around, it’s just context.

And besides, if going through the army was supposed to imprint permanently swearing and cursing into your daily conversational patterns, I would be hearing a lot of it around me among my friends, colleagues and acquaintances – but I never.:)