Some people are offended by the f-bomb and that's fine. I used to be. I couldn't say *shit* if my mouth had been full of it. Then I entered the world of EMS in one of the busiest non-metro services in the state of Minnesota. I learned the art quickly. A twelve hour shift with paramedics and police is twelves hours punctuated excessively with the f-bomb.

Then I married a soldier. His first deployment was a sixteen month tour of Iraq. A month before he returned, all of us at home received an email from his Captain warning all families that their soldier may swear more than he did before his deployment. Part of it read: "I know a couple of guys that can make complete sentences using only f-bombs with a few words like if, then and the sprinkled in."

It was true. My husband came back and in random conversation, whoops! A bomb!

I think people who have experience and/or witnessed a lot of trauma in their lives need some way to deal with it. Being in the business, I've seen a lot of things that could have made my heart hard, unfeeling and apathetic or just driven me crazy. To maintain some sense of humanity, the hardness came out in my language. It kept me somewhat compassionate.

So yes, there is a lot of swearing in the book. It's how we talked to each other. Sometimes it's even how we showed affection to each other. It was a lifestyle like any other I have ever known.