Excuse me, but I have a little gripe with the CTA’s new “courtesy campaign.”
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It’s not the effort itself. Overall, I love it that Chicago’s transit system has listened to customer complaints and is ready to tell riders to shape up. The snarky messages that will start showing up on buses and L trains in coming weeks target most of the behaviors that drive me batty on my morning and evening commutes. People who refuse to move in to the middle of the train cars, riders who park their bags on the only remaining empty seats, the seatmate who carries on a spirited phone call for all to hear. The new signs are fun and on-point.
My favorite features the very pregnant belly of a woman standing over a seated young man. The text says: “Ride with heart. Won’t you offer your seat? Please offer a pregnant passenger your seat. Remember, your mother was pregnant once.”
In a society where a pregnant Lucille Ball was once prohibited from saying the word “pregnant” on her “I Love Lucy” TV show, it’s nice to see how far we’ve come.
What’s got my britches in a bunch is another of the CTA signs. It’s meant to reduce littering and features a man standing in a train car that is full up to his waist in trash. The message: “Your maid doesn’t work here. Please don’t leave your crap behind.”
Like I said, I’m all for the evolution of language. I’m relieved that we can say “pregnant” out loud without offending. But “crap”?
Jeez Louise, are we really using “crap” on official printed signs now? And in a “courtesy campaign,” no less?
CTA spokesman Brian Steele says use of the word never fazed him or the others on the CTA communications team that created and produced all the messages. “The image exaggerates the point. And the language is conversational and casual,” he said. “We wanted language that pushes the envelope.”
OK. I get it, and overall the campaign works nicely. I hope it helps.
But it got me wondering why I cringed so much at the use of “crap” — which, admittedly, is more precise than “stuff” or “things” in this instance (though “trash” might’ve worked just fine).
The word “crap” falls into the category of “borderline bad words” that were banned (or deeply frowned upon) during my upbringing. I took to social media to find out if I was alone in my middle-aged prudishness, lumping together “crap,” “sucks” and “pissed” in a Facebook post asking how other people felt about their use. A fascinating discussion unfolded. There was a general consensus that although many of us — even as adults — probably would not use those words in front of our parents, and we preferred that young children don’t use them, we were OK with teenagers using them. The reality being, of course, that those words are far tamer than the much more profane language that’s shamelessly tossed around in public by other adults, teens and even very young children.
Here’s what a few of them had to say:
From Ann Smith Zvibleman of Michigan: “‘Crap’ is a relatively new addition to words I’d use in front of my tweens — but still infrequent. They are borderline words, not to be encouraged but not worthy of punishment either.”
From Melissa Kanovsky of New York: “My husband and I do not like our teens using (those words), even at home in the kitchen with us. It’s old-school of us, but ‘wait until you don’t live with us before you start that’ is our message. My sisters and I all swear in conversation with our parents, but we are a whole lot older and they have eased up quite a bit.”
From Mike Mesrchel of Texas: “I regularly tell my kids that I consider such language crass, which does not prevent them from using such language when they think I am out of earshot.”
Merschel went on to say that he imposes viewings of “My Fair Lady” on his kids to illustrate that “your words make you who you are.”
Which is what I was trying to get at.
To fact-check my memory of purer times, I called the source of my own uneasiness with these words: Mom.
Rose Weber confirmed that she and my dad rarely cursed around me or my younger brother when we were growing up. “We just didn’t cuss then anyway,” she said, using that old-fashioned Southern word for swearing and suggesting that they do now, which I can’t say I’ve ever heard them do.
But what about those borderline words?
“That just seems like low-life talk,” she said. “Those are not words you should use.”
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Got that, CTA? Mom has spoken.
Lara Weber is a member of the Tribune Editorial Board. The views reflected here are her own.