When I transitioned from the Navy to the civilian world, I found I needed to tone down my language. A lot. As a number of sailors do, I tended to use the f-word with the frequency that most people use “y’know” (and with roughly the same emotions behind it, so actual swearing occasions tended to be highly colorful). Fortunately, I had gone to a high school with a large Jewish population (we had Rosh Hosannah and Yom Kippur off) so I had a certain Yiddish vocabulary. High schoolers being who they are, most of them were profane. But with goyim, who would know, right?

The universe having a sick sense of humor, my first civilian boss was an Israeli. Lovely old white-haired electrical engineer.

We were working with a new engineering program, not fully tested, and at one point I let the software know what I thought of it, its programmers, and its resemblance to sexual organs. Giora was standing right next to me, which I remembered several milliseconds after I was done expounding. He had a shocked look on his face that I wish I could have photographed. “I… do not tink… dat it vas dat bad…” was all he managed to get out.

I started collecting obscure British profanity after that.