The power of words

I was reading a novel about a woman in her forties with a retired husband in his early sixties and her friend comes to her for permission to have an affair with her husband. You want to F-word my husband?

The word does not shock me any more than Bush’s shit, although the lack of his diplomatic behavior does. What was interesting some one had crossed out the word with a blue pen.

What is it that makes an arrangement of letters so powerful to some people. My mother rather than hearing that word would rather be stabbed, which made the word far more powerful to be used against her, and I have to admit I did from time to time. A professor I had used it every other word, which gave it all the weight of the likes and you knows that dominate so much American speech that if you take them out of a fifty word speech, ten words that only aren’t like or you know will be left.

I wondered why the previous reader felt she had to get up, find a pen and cross the word out several times with impressions so hard it dented the paper.

I also wondered if she would have reacted so strongly to the word bomb, kill, war, words that mean death, versus the word for an act that brings pleasure and possibly new life.