Scott Janes is a an actor who has rescued or arrested almost every major character in daytime, as well as appeared in Bilge Ebiri’s excellent film, New Guy. He is also the author of several screenplays.

When I was 10 years old my parents switched me from public to private school to help me overcome dyslexia. This life-long nemesis, which they called my “learning disability,” had been recently re-labeled as a “learning difference” by the Minnesota Board of Education in an attempt to boost student esteem — and justify budget cuts. To my parents, the Orwellian distinction meant it was time for change.

I was given a choice between Breck School, an Episcopalian institution housed in an abandoned public high school, and The Blake Schools — an ivy-covered edifice which housed the scions of the Minneapolis rich. I’d spent my life in the Episcopalian church and knew the dull, gaping maw of its boredom, so I chose The Blake Schools and Godlessness. That, as they say, made all the difference.

I spent my last summer of freedom being tutored by a woman from my church named Mrs. Dowd, an ex-hippie who was to be my new fifth grade teacher. She told me I needed to work extra hard to catch my classmates, to whom learning was some kind of narcotic. This turned out to be overkill when classes started and I discovered that the real private school kids were just smart-asses with good manners who rode around in nice cars. They weren’t more intelligent, just shinier and a lot more competitive. I realized that if I wanted to rise from social oblivion, I needed artillery to lob into this playground battlefield. I had but one secret weapon.

My father is a gynecologist. From an early age, I was peppered with evocative words during even the most banal family time. To this day, when watching a Vikings game, I associate third and long with a patient named Gretchen Sundstrum needing a Pap smear. I brought this distinction to the fifth grade lunch table.

“Awesome, the vagina is totally awesome!” It was David Sorrenstam and he had just reached page four of “Where Do I Come From,” the well-illustrated reproductive guidebook I had borrowed from my father’s library.

“That’s where the penis goes.” I said, helpfully turning to the glossy copulation on page six.

“Janes, man. You are awesome!”

And I was. I remember this time the way most people remember college, with sepia-toned fondness for my burgeoning promise.

Private schools assign group projects to teach children how to work well with one another. If a child has a special skill, they hope it will rise from the muck, assert itself, and rub off on the others. I taught the children to rub one off while looking at muck. As our minds grew debased our tongues followed, and soon our colloquialisms became as colorful as the pictures in my father’s casebooks.

The teachers, it seemed, were listening.

We barely noticed at first — a frown on Mrs. Dowd’s face when Dave Dorfman called Grier Kline a “penis breath,” a huff and a puff from Mr. Strand when Grier Altman reported that Jenny Colbert’s “mammaries” were developing nicely. We didn’t stop there. It was springtime for rich kids in Wayzata and we were drinking in the sap.

That’s when they cancelled classes and called us in for “a meeting.”

We were marched down to the drama room, a retrofitted sub-library cellar, whose only entrance was an endless wrought-iron staircase. I remember looking up into fluorescent lamps and disappearing stacks of children’s books as we made our way down. I didn’t know it then, but neither the light nor those books would ever look the same.

We gathered in boy-girl clusters, sitting Indian-style as the teachers heatedly conversed amongst themselves on the makeshift plywood platform. Mrs. Dowd, visibly exasperated, finally threw up her hands and took center stage. She took a deep breath and commenced the transformation of our lives.

“We want to talk to you about some things we’ve been hearing — things that we do not like! This meeting is a clearing of the air and we want you to know that what goes on down here stays down here.” She was seething, speaking to us directly with no filter and no condescension. I had never seen an adult in this state and I wouldn’t again for many years. It was thrilling.

“There are words that you kids are using and they are inappropriate and I don’t ever want to hear them again. We know you know these words and we don’t care where you heard them but after today we don’t ever want to hear them again. Is that clear?”

And then she opened it up.

“Words like FUCK and SHIT! ASSHOLE and MOTHERFUCKER! Do you know what these words mean? I don’t think so. But you say them anyway. You’re going to learn their meaning today and find out how they feel. I can say those words — FUCK! SHIT! Does that make me cool? Does that make me awesome?”

She surveyed the room.

“Scott. Say FUCK!”

“What?” I said with my hands folded over my genitals, which were buzzing in a way I did not understand.

“Say FUCK!” It was a command I never dreamed I’d hear nor imagined disobeying. But I was paralyzed. I turned to Tim Morton, my best friend and the Paul Revere of Lower School cuss words. He was as frightened as I, but there was a light in his eye that said glory was within reach and that it needed to be seized. I took a deep breath as the surge rose from my crotch.

“FUCK,” I said in my voice still like a little girl’s.

My classmates looked on in awe.

“Do you know what that means?” Mrs. Dowd asked.

“No!” I said self-protectively. Then my ego kicked in.

“Well…” She focused her fire and brimstone gaze. “I mean. No.”

I knew. At least I thought I did. But her challenge and the very fact that this was happening meant that I was no longer sure of anything. I didn’t want to say a word, any word, for fear that if I did, I might cry.

“You don’t know? The word FUCK doesn’t mean anything to you? How about COCKSUCKER?”

The first of what would be many giggles broke from the gallery but I was unmoved. A thirty-year old woman who took communion next to me was looking me in the eye and saying ‘cocksucker.’ I was pretty sure that time had stopped.

“A, uh, uh, cocksucker is another word for…asshole?” I snuck it out, afraid that it might get me in trouble.

“No. It isn’t,” she said. “Some people use it that way. But they are wrong. They are stupid. You use that word and you don’t even know what it means! Are you stupid?”

“I didn’t use it,” I said.

“You didn’t? You’ve never said ‘COCKSUCKER?

“Well…”

“I think you have,” she said disappointedly. “But it doesn’t matter now. Because it’s all out in the open. Can anybody tell me what COCKSUCKER means?”

There was a long pause while her interrogative hung in the air like a filthy faerie.

“A COCKSUCKER,” Mrs. Dowd said. “Is a slang term for someone who puts the male penis in their mouth during love-making in order to give pleasure to their partner. But it is a pejorative, a put down, that demeans the act and the person who performs it. It should never be used at all. Period.”

There was silence as we chewed on this for a while. Mrs. Dowd just stared at us with a slowly growing contempt. She was about to launch another missive when a hand went up in the front row.

It belonged to Molly Thompson, the smartest, prettiest, best-behaved girl in school. She wore pigtails.

“I know what fuck means.” All eyes turned to the foul-mouthed angel in the argyle sweater vest. It was out of character, but a question posed meant an “A” to be had and Molly could not resist.

“It means intercourse, between a man and a woman in order to make a baby. But it’s a bad word.”

“That’s right Molly,” said Mrs. Dowd. “It’s very bad. It’s also used as an exclamation when adults get upset, as in “FUCK, I’M MAD!” But only stupid people use it, who don’t have the vocabulary to find a better word.”

Molly smiled the happy smile of the little girl who got it right.

“Anyone else? How about MOTHERFUCKER? Anyone know what that means?”

Fifteen tiny hands shot in the air.

For 45 minutes, Mrs. Dowd worked the room like an auctioneer selling filth for demystification. She had a lot of buyers. Everyone got a chance and soon the mood turned to exhilaration. ‘Shit’ wasn’t as bad as other words but it still wasn’t appropriate to use in school, not when you can say deficant, and be impressive. Tawanna Douglas knew what ‘bastard’ meant because she was one and didn’t like hearing others say it. And “rim job”? Well, Mary Mitchum should’ve never brought that one up.

We ascended the stairs as changed children having taken a succulent bite out of the teacher’s tree of knowledge. Some of us were scared straight. But others had their minds buzzing. Language was more than a two dimensional tool for getting what you wanted. It had breadth and scope and bite — and if you were in command of the words, it had life changing power! The ones packed on our utility belts made us playground super heroes — soon sixth, even seventh graders were eating out of our hands.

I spent seven more years in The Blake Schools but no lesson sunk in as deep
as the Drama Room Language Lab. Dyslexia never seemed like a problem again.
It may have taken me longer to get through a book, but I knew it was
worth the toil. Somewhere in there was something I didn’t know, and I never
again wanted to be caught not knowing what ‘cocksucker’ meant.