Before I tell you what Marcos and Lil’ Eddie did with the untraceable gun that Eddie got for Marcos, and about how Eddie drove Marcos to Dr. Ugliski’s neighborhood where Marcos shot his young wife’s obstetrician in the heart, then ran away and confessed to Monsignor Brian “Rusty” O’Neal at St. Thomas Roman Catholic Church, then also confessed to his wife, and finally then to the police, successfully got prosecuted by my then colleague, Jones Osgood, when his confession to the police didn’t get suppressed, then won a retrial when the appellate court reversed his conviction and also suppressed unlawful confession to the police, and then what happened when I had to re-try the case but without the confession . . . I need to tell you that I was never supposed to be a prosecuting attorney.

I was supposed to be a preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ . . . but I pretty much fucked that up.

“F-U-C-K,” what a problematic little English word, huh?

Once on a walk with our fourteen year old son, Jacob, we were passing by our church in the neighborhood where we lived, and I noticed for the umpteenth time the four letters, “F,” “U,” “C,” and “K” that some miscreant had scratched into the wet cement a long time ago when the sidewalk was being poured in front of the church that nobody had ever felt the need to sandblast out or to re-pour that square of sidewalk even though it said “FUCK” right on the sidewalk in front of a Conservative Baptist Church that had been started in the 1950s!

What the hell, you strangely tolerant fifty years of Conservative Baptists! Were you blind? Or did you just think that was funny like Jacob and I did that day?

“Frederick Ulysses Cornelius Kornpepper!” I said out loud as we walked past the profane square of cement. “That’s going to be my new go-to secret swear word from now on so your mother won’t be able to get after me all the time like she does!”

“Go for it, Dad!” Jacob laughed. “It’ll be our little secret. Mom will just think that you’re a little ‘odd,’ but she already thinks THAT!”

To test my new stealth obscenity, I asked Maria when Jacob and I got home, “Do we know anyone named ‘Frederick Ulysses Cornelius Kornpepper,’ Sweetie?” And Maria said, “No. Why do you ask?” “Oh no reason,” I answered my wife, “I read the name when Jacob and I were on our walk and thought it was interesting. I thought that I would say that when I’m upset like you say ‘Oh, shoot!’ and then I could cut down on most of the cussing that I do that you know you don’t like when I do it.”

“I really WOULD like that a lot, Sweetie,” Maria said, “Especially since they elected you a deacon at church this last annual meeting.”

Jacob almost didn’t make it to his room before he muffled some still audible choked laughter.

“What’s wrong with Jacob?” Maria asked me with some concern in her voice.

“Just his asthma acting up a little,” I answered with the hope that this would be a believable “little white lie.”

“I’m sure he’ll use his inhaler if he needs to.” After all, if I could cut down on my use of overt profanity, even in this surreptitious manner, Jesus would like that, wouldn’t He?

Anyway . . . I still remember when I was a brand new believer in Jesus Christ when I was just twenty years old, a few months and a couple thousand miles before I met Maria and I was telling a guy who I had picked up in my little Volkswagen Beetle when he was hitchhiking and we got to talking about spiritual things. As I explained how great it was to be “washed in the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ” and have all my sins removed thereby and how “really FUCKING GREAT a thing that was!” I heard the still small voice of Jesus’ Holy Spirit saying to me, “LOVE your enthusiasm, Mac! Let’s work a bit on your vocabulary now.”

But I never seemed to shake that obscene word no matter how many times that I tried . . . and I really fu- um- tried REAL HARD!

[DISCLAIMER: SOME OF THIS STUFF IS MADE UP. SOME OF IT MIGHT BE TRUE. WHAT’S IT TO YA IF IT IS? ARE YA F-IN’ TRYIN’ TO START TROUBLE!]