My father had a - *ahem* - colorful vocabulary.
He was many things - an engineer, a spreadsheet enthusiast, a serial spaghetti western watcher; an outdoorsman, a thinker, a builder, a doer, a joker, a prankster, a Parrothead, and - oddly - an Enya fan.
Yes, Dad was down with the Orinoco Flow. His laugh was large and loud and infectious and would Dad-dance its way through the entire house. The man was also a gifted profanitizer. Which means he swore. A LOT. And his cursing was large and loud and infectious and would dance through the entire house. Mostly when he was tinkering with some project and things weren't quite going as planned. And he was always tinkering with some project. And things usually weren't quite going as planned. |
The year was 1979. I was six, my sister was two. Robert Duvall was loving the smell of napalm in the morning and nothing was coming between Brooke Shields and her Calvins.
And my dad thought it would be totally boss to brew his own root beer. Which it absolutely was. Until it absolutely wasn't. Dad popped the cap off the first bottle and suddenly it was a mini solid rocket booster and was all IT'S A GO FOR LIFTOFF. Except this wasn't Cape Canaveral. It was our kitchen. Duck and cover, bitches. Root beer exploded out of that bottle like a rocket and hit the ceiling at Mach 3. All of it. Every last drop. On the ceiling. If its path had been clear, that shit would have been headed for orbit. Dad had unwittingly brewed a magnificent concoction of carbonation on steroids on crack. Since the idea was to make root beer and not rocket fuel or ICBMs, this episode immediately got filed under "events that did not quite go as expected." I can still hear my father yelling loudly, in confused disbelief : "WHAT the Shi...ugarjets!" |
His brush strokes were four-letter words - sometimes individuals, other times strung together in eye-opening combinations.
My father never half-assed anything. It was either go big or go home. Carpet-bombing with curse words was no exception.
Not only were many of these masterpieces NSFW, they also weren't safe for use anywhere in public. Or in the company of strangers.
Or neighbors. Or friends. And they definitely were not for the ears of tiny humans and wee toddlers.
So when virgin ears were nearby, my father did what any self-respecting artist would do : he got creative.
He adopted the word Sugarjets (later shortened to just "tshyet!") as his generic, child-friendly go-to phrase for all things #$!@.
My father never half-assed anything. It was either go big or go home. Carpet-bombing with curse words was no exception.
Not only were many of these masterpieces NSFW, they also weren't safe for use anywhere in public. Or in the company of strangers.
Or neighbors. Or friends. And they definitely were not for the ears of tiny humans and wee toddlers.
So when virgin ears were nearby, my father did what any self-respecting artist would do : he got creative.
He adopted the word Sugarjets (later shortened to just "tshyet!") as his generic, child-friendly go-to phrase for all things #$!@.
And that's how Sugarjets was born.
*True Fact : To this day my mother still has unopened bottles of bionic root beer that everyone has been afraid to drink. Or move. Or touch.
FOR THIRTY-FIVE YEARS.
They've been sitting in the same spot, in the same cardboard container, for over three decades because my mother is - quite rightly -
afraid of accidentally creating a thermonuclear event in her basement.
FOR THIRTY-FIVE YEARS.
They've been sitting in the same spot, in the same cardboard container, for over three decades because my mother is - quite rightly -
afraid of accidentally creating a thermonuclear event in her basement.
Sugarjets is a philosophy. A way of thinking. A way of life.
Isn't it time to do less of the working and more of the living? That rum isn't going to drink itself now, is it?
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