A lot of comedians have promoted the idea that there are no Bad Words--notably George Carlin, and Lenny Bruce before him, and Carlos Mencia after him. I understand this concept in theory, that words in themselves are indifferent and can't be inherently bad or good, but I'm not sure I agree. It's a premise that strikes me the same way as the adage that "guns don't kill people, people kill people." After all, the same might be said of a nuclear warhead, which can't technically be convicted of causing destruction, but that's clearly the purpose for which it was designed.

I blame my five-year-old neighbor, Mandy, for raising this issue and sending me down this path. Almost every Friday, my whole neighborhood assembles for Margarita Night and, having no children myself, I really enjoy interacting with all the local kids. Mandy is particularly interesting to me. She's an extremely intelligent but oddly humorless child, with an inflexible sense of right and wrong, and no qualms about setting the adults straight if we cross the line. When an attendee at one of our gatherings went off on a political tangent, Mandy wagged her finger and interrupted him to chastise, "You said the 'I' word." The question in my mind was immediately apparent on the faces of everyone else. And, considering the size of the crowd and the potency of the margaritas, it's sort of miraculous that nobody compounded the original offense by asking, "What the #@%& is the 'I' word?"

The "I" word, it turns out, is "Idiot." That was not included on the list my parents gave me as a child (and I don't think I need to itemize my own list, just refer to any 1970s routine from the aforementioned George Carlin). In fact, I learned that hardly any of the Bad Words on my list correlated with those on Mandy's. If ever she accuses you of using the "F" word, for instance, don't panic, it's not what you think. The "F" word on her list is "Fat." Also included are the "U" word (Ugly), the "J" word (Jerk), and the "S" word--again, not what you think. On Mandy's list, the "S" word is "Stupid."

I got to thinking about the disparity between Mandy's list of Bad Words and my own and decided that hers made a lot more sense. My list basically consisted of vulgar body-part slang, while hers consisted of mean words specifically designed to hurt. We can keep both lists as subsets, I suppose, but, if "Bad" is the main header, then "Mean" should definitely occupy a much loftier slot than "Vulgar."

So, thanks to my mentor Mandy, I am compiling a revised list of Bad Words, which I'm thinking of working into a sort of reverse-version of my Vocabulary Calendar. Rather than adding a "Word of the Day" to my mental dictionary, it will subtract one. The new list is not yet complete because my mentor's mommy won't let her tell me what the rest of the words are. But, in that same oddly humorless way of hers, Mandy suggested that I might want to begin carrying paper and pencil to Margarita Night and, when she hears someone using one, she will happily point it out for me.