Once upon a time, there was a teacher in the strange land of Spanish Fork.She assigned her 7th graders to write a thing called a Poem for Two Voices, but because they had never heard of such a thing, she offered examples for them to read. She passed the examples out, but she didn't reread them beforehand, and so missed the fact that there was a Word in one of them. A Word most horrible and distasteful.
That word was Hell. Used as a noun.
(Pause for dramatic emphasis)
And lo, when the 7th graders came upon the Word, they gasped and shuddered, just as I am sure you are doing right now.
And they said, "Miss Winegar, do we have to read this word out loud?" And their benevolent teacher looked at them with dismay and said, "Of course not, dear children! I am so sorry for exposing you to anything so depraved!" And so they replaced it with "Heck" and all was well.
But behold, one of the children was a bad child. He had no problem with the Word and read it OUT LOUD for all to hear. And the children gasped louder and shunned the child.
But a good little child read the poem next and substituted the word "Heck" for the horrible word and everyone told him what a good thing he had done by not swearing.
And the teacher winked and gave a thumbs up to the bad child for not being afraid of a word that is in the BIBLE and has been said in multiple sessions of GENERAL CONFERENCE, especially when used as the name of a place and not as a curse.
But she secretly prayed that she would receive no horrified phone calls from shocked parents, because you never know what can happen when you are in such a strange land.
Note: This is how I told the story to Nate Kartchner and I thought I was so funny I decided to post it. I think I was inspired by the Vidal Sassoon writing style.
