The Ef Word*
*parental discretion advised I've thought about how to bring this up--and on a rainy, gloomy day, why not. The first time I read the word "fuck" I think I was in middle school. A precocious reader, I first came across it Catcher in the Rye , but never bothered to look it up. I read it again maybe a few months later at Christmas. Dad got a book from Mom and since I'd read all the books given to me for Christmas I picked up his, The Summer of '42 , about a group of friends, boys, who have one last summer before going off to World War II. It isn't a summer of innocence. I believe the book was a movie tie-in. One of the boys has a last fling with a neighbor lady who is missing her husband or sex or maybe wants to "help" the young man before he leaves. The plot was a one-night stand, about the time it took to read the book. But what really hit me was the word f--- used not as a strong curse word or boys shooting off their mouths in the schoolyard but ...