My father died in 1964. I was 6 years old. Even though most of my life has been lived in his absence, his life has taught valuable lessons. This 5 part blog series is about those lessons.

2. Profanity is a sign of a limited vocabulary

My father, reportedly, never swore. My mother claims she can count on 2 fingers (i think that means twice) the number of times he used profanity.

In a moment of frustration, my mother uttered the "S*#!" word to which he calmly replied, "Lib, you've got something in your mouth I wouldn't want on the bottom of my shoe." My mother and my father encouraged me to learn new and exciting words to express myself. To this day I marvel the power and expanse of words.

Dictionary.com has an iPhone app that delivers a "word of the day" to my phone.  Why, just this week I had the good fortune of having the word "spatchcock" taught to me. Finding ways to properly spatchcock new and unusual words into my daily speech sure beats the "H#&^" out of profanity. :)