“Did that make you feel better?” I have good news backed by actual scientific research conducted by actual scientist type people on actual live people, much like yourself…I assume. The next time you’re strolling around the friendly confines of your home barefoot and you step on a well-placed Lego or stub your toe on the stool that’s sitting two inches further away from the kitchen island than normal you can answer, “YES, actually it does make me feel better”, through gritted teeth, to the smirking source of the question.

Often time’s science supports the obvious and lends reason, logic, and varying levels of proof to what we’ve always suspected to be true. It provides data and language that gives structure and form to the abstract intuition we’ve never really questioned.

So the next time your mowing the lawn and you bang your head on the tree branch you were going to cut off the last time you mowed around that tree and banged your head, know that science fully supports the word or words that reflexively come out of your mouth as you clutch your melon with one hand and fling your sunglasses against the side of the garden shed in a fit of rage with the other. So I’ve heard.

Just in case mister-know-it-all Alex Trebek asks, “coprolalia” is the medical term for involuntary swearing. It comes from the Greek words “kopros” (feces) and “lalia” (to talk).

I recently read an interesting book “Swearing Is Good for You: The Amazing Science of Bad Language” by Emma Byrne, where she amusingly reports on research that indicates that “swearing helps us bear pain, work together, and communicate emotions.”

Interestingly, the research also supports what I’ve always suspected, “fake” swear words don’t cut it. It seems that the “Jiminy Christopher” my potty-mouthed wife lets fly occasionally in exasperation does little for her exasperation, but quite a lot for my entertainment…which is probably quite exasperating.

This doesn’t mean that the real McCoy’s of your blue streak go-to list should be slung about willy-nilly. As Ms. Byrne puts it in her book, “swearing is like mustard; a great ingredient but a lousy meal.” Many moons ago when I was a college baseball player the team got lectured by an umpire who wasn’t particularly fond of our use of the English language. We had made the mistake of making a meal out of it, but in our defense he was a lousy umpire. So it goes.

The next day at practice our coach, a colorful guy who possessed a lovely sarcastic wit, and once quipped to one of my teammates after he got thrown out at third base trying in vain to stretch a double into a triple, “Nice slide. You looked like a monkey falling out of tree” said, “Fellas, if swearing helped us win ballgames we’d practice it. I was in the Navy, I could teach you a few you haven’t heard yet.”

Well Coach, research indicates that although it probably wouldn’t help us win ballgames, it did help us bear the pain of getting rooked by an umpire that was apparently in the latter stages of macular degeneration. Besides, the coach started it when he loudly suggested that the umpire “turn around and use his good eye”.

Swearers are reported to be an honest lot. The research says so…I swear.