One of my favorite scenes in the nostalgic holiday film “A Christmas Story” comes on the heels of Old Man Parker sneakily pulling some turkey meat off from the birds his wife has pulled out of the oven on Christmas morning.

In an off-guard moment, Mr. Parker has his back turned, and a door outside was left open, and as a result, the hillbilly neighbors’ dogs stream into the kitchen with one common goal- to grab and eat whatever Christmas turkey meat they can get hold of. The Bumpus Hounds, Mr. Parker’s great local nemeses, accomplish their mission, and as Parker awakens to their dastardly deed, we are treated in the film to a long artificially-altered litany of profanities heaved at the full and fleeing dogs. Old Man Parker is a master at the cuss-out, which the film portrays in a creative way.

Mr. Parker certainly was familiar with many colorful and descriptive terms to use in addressing that moment, and certainly the long common Americanism was one of them.

I used to pride myself on not swearing at all, being a good Christian man, but at some point in my late-thirties or early-forties, the gravitas of meaningful living shifted in my world, and I succumbed to unbecoming utterances here and there, in my private life, when alone and enraged or flustered by something seemingly incalculable.

The truth is, Old Man Parker and I really both succumbed to something that is common in adulthood, to finite adults.

Limitations.

Because it is when we start running up against limits in midlife that we rarely encountered previously that we grow aware that there are walls in our existence we cannot get over, or feats we cannot accomplish, or destinies that escape our reach, and the limitations breed beside our sense of possibilities, slowly choking some of them down.

And the by-product of these denials is frustration.

Mr. Parker yelling at the Bumpus Hounds on film is a hilarious caricature of a middl-aged man facing foes in his life he cannot contain, and his only recourse is to uncork the fountain of curses as his relief from frustrations.

In my case, my F-word is really “frustration”.

I know it the moment it sends an incendiary bark out of my mouth, my reaction to a spoon falling off a counter when it seemed impossible for that to happen, or when a shipping charge appears on a bill when it was not presented in the original agreement, or when my feet are numb and tingly, distractingly so, when I have no reason to explain whey they are.

The cussing is just the symptom. The violation is this impatient, angry, bitter spirit in me that cannot comprehend or accept some arbitrary limit placed indiscriminately on me by nature and gravity, or by my HOA, or by my insurance company, or by the illogical actions of my new neighbor. The young man bucks at the folly of the fates, who giggle at my human realization that I am not a god.

I am trying to limit my time around the F-word.

It takes catching yourself, and accepting that what is is what is, and fighting that instinct in aging to try to go faster, to get it done all at once, to muster a single charge of energy to greet the moment as the moment demands it- because that energy will not be there twenty seconds later.

It takes accepting lethargy, some laziness, relearning patience, and slowing down to remember and try again.

And that in life, there are limits.

So, if and when I slip and hear myself barking unseemly language, I need to stop and remember I am really trying to deal with my f-word.