19 Things That Make Me Swear

There are two kinds of swearing:

1) Normal, conversational swearing, like, "Oh shit I forgot to invite Dave...whatever fuck Dave I don't really like him anyway."

2) And then there's real swearing. Like, "Oh FUCKING HELL! They towed my fucking car!"

The first type isn't really swearing-- it's just a part of typical American slang. I'm pretty liberal with this type. For example, I curse like sailor on this blog.

But the second type-- the real swearing-- is reserved for special occasions. So since you most likely woke up today and were like, "I wonder what makes Tim really swear-- like, the second type of swearing," I figured I'd make a little list for you.

I give you 19 occasions on which I swear:

When I'm in a rush and the person in front of me stops at the yellow light.

When I'm calling a girl I don't know very well, and I'm gonna leave a message and the phone call drops while it's ringing before the message comes on. This makes me swear because it leaves me with two bad choices: leave it at that and seem like this weird dude who called but was too scared or too cool to leave a message-- or, call back and leave a message and seem like this weird dude who called twice in two minutes.

When I'm trying to be productive, and the internet is either not moving or working excruciatingly slowly. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the stress and angst induced by slow or non-functioning internet will take off 5-10 years of my life when all is said and done.

When I realize that I forgot about the boiling pasta and it's been boiling for a half hour.

When someone on the Red Sox hits into a double play with one out and the bases loaded. While we're on sports, a moment that always induces a swear is during a fantasy draft when a guy you really want is slipping to you...and slipping to you...and then the guy right before you takes him.

When my iPhone slips out of my hand and cracks against the floor. Swearing only occurs when both the case is off and it lands a hard surface.

When I shop around for flights on Kayak.com and then a few days pass while I figure out a last detail or two and then I head back to Kayak and suddenly everything is $300 more expensive than it was two days ago.

When I accidentally knock my toothbrush off the counter and it plunges headfirst into the toilet.

When the coffee lid mouthpiece happens to be lined up with the little paper overlap in the rim, creating a tiny space, so when I take a sip, coffee dribbles out on my white shirt, a shirt that I need to wear for the next eight hours. To be clear, I don't swear every time I spill coffee on my shirt-- only in that specific instance when I spill it on a white shirt that I have no choice but to wear for the next eight hours.

When I'm driving and hear that little snippet of a siren and look in my rear view mirror and see a cop behind me with his lights on.

When I stub my toe badly. Not the times I stub my toe normally. The times when I stub it badly.

When I accidentally bump an uncapped water bottle and it topples over, hideously pouring water into the keys of my laptop like murderous lava pouring into my wretched soul. This happened two months ago. I cursed mightily. The worst part was that I had to borrow a laptop for two months before buying a new one because the new Mac laptops were just about to come out and I'll be damned if I was gonna buy the current version right before the new ones arrived. Then, yesterday, I got the new Mac laptop. I'm in a severe honeymoon phase at the moment. It is a glorious creature.

When I'm sitting at a stoplight and I get rear-ended. Or when I'm looking at a map and I rear-end someone. Both of these have happened. The former elicits a "What the FUCK?!" The latter, a "god FUCKING dammit!"

When I have some reason I need to wake up at a certain time and I wake up at a much later time and realize either that my alarm didn't go off or that I turned it off instead of pressing snooze and fell back asleep even though you'd think I would have learned by now to always press snooze unless I'm physically out of bed. Speaking of which, "snooze" is a completely ridiculous word.

When I'm playing tennis and fall into one of those bad zones where I make a string of unforced errors and each time I get more frustrated, which causes me to make even more unforced errors. Rackets have been broken.

When I excitedly flip through my TiVo looking for something and realize I fucked it up and it didn't record.

Burning myself usually leads to a loud swear. But one situation leads to the loudest of burn swears: when the soup is done and I take it out of the microwave and carry it out of the kitchen to the table but every second the bowl starts to burn my hands more and more until I get near the table and it's scorching my fingers and I drop it the last inch before hitting the table and some of the soup spills.

This one is the worst. You know those automated dudes when you call customer service who ask you to say things instead of pressing things? Like, instead of saying, "For technical service, press 1; for a customer service representative, press 2," they'll say, "for technical service, say, 'technical service'; for a customer service representative, say, 'representative.'" This kills me. If you ever hear me on the phone, angrily yelling a random word every five seconds, it means I'm on the phone with one of these automated pricks. It goes something like this:

Him: Hello. Please listen carefully as our menu has been changed. For store hours and directions, say, "store hours and directions"; for technical service, say, "technical service"; for a customer service representative, say, "representative."
Me: "Representative."
[pause]
Him: I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Let's try again. For sto—
Me: "Representative!"[pause]
Him: Did you say, "technical service"?
Me: "NO!"
[pause]
Him: I'm sorry, I didn't get that. Did you say, "technical service"?
Me: "NO!"
Him: Hm. Let's try one more time. For s—
Me: "REPRESENTATIVE!"
[pause]
Him: Okay. Hold on one moment while I transfer you.
[pause]
Him: To help me direct you to the best location, tell me what you need. For questions about billing, say, "billing." For questions about sales, say, "sales." For questions about products, say, "prod—"
Me: PRODUCTS.
[pause]
Him: I'm sorry, I—
Me: FUCKING FUCK!
[pause]
Him: Did you say, "billing?"

And so on.

This last one may bring out the fiercest swearing of them all-- when computer applications quit at the worst time possible. When I've been writing a long email and I'm almost done and "The application Safari has unexpectedly quit." (Thank god gmail saves things every few minutes-- in the old days, no one saved shit.) When I'm working on something in Microsoft Word and it somehow gets lost-- the longer the document that I've just lost, the louder and more complex the swearing. That one time I lost an important "sticky note" induced a bellowing profanity.

Life, at times, is infuriating.