Soap in the Mouth

Yes, I vaguely recall at some time before we went to the mission field, so I must have been about age 7, hearing about the little boy down the street who got his mouth washed out with soap. How shocking! What a traumatic experience it must have been for you to have your parents shoving a bar of soap into your facial orifice and making you endure the bitter taste of your own foul words. At age 7 or younger I cannot imagine how that could happen. I would never do that, I am pretty sure. I mean, I cannot even imagine at about age 7 what those words might be that could have earned you such a humiliating punishment, one that still resounds throughout the neighborhood even now, whatever your name was, although I don't think we ever met. You were a very bad boy, obviously, because your parents were forced to resort to such dire measures in order to bring you face to face with your own wicked mistake, as we heard. Ok, so maybe I exaggerated in retelling of the story. I don't have a brother so I don't have any family obligation to look the other way and pretend that I didn't hear that. Still, I imagine that you paid dearly for that verbal mishap. Perhaps my cousins or someone told you about this conversation, but if you were expecting me to repeat that same conversation in high school then you were sorely disappointed. Obviously I am not going to repeat in high school a conversation that I had at age 7 or thereabouts. In high school we don't see Miss Marken or some other teacher handing out bars of soap during study hall. No, obviously, beyond the initial shock of realizing what you actually said if you actually were thinking about what you were saying and not just mindlessly parroting something someone else said, which happens, we see that you are bound and determined to do whatever you want, even if we are not particularly impressed with your lack of vocabulary. I can see where you might have a very successful career dropping F-bombs as an army pilot,  but I would not think of recommending you for some diplomatic post which would require actual thought and social skills. I am not trying to be mean. I am just describing what I saw in high school.