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“… or I’ll wash your mouth out with soap!”
By: Jen Pannell
A few days ago, I found myself recalling a childhood punishment involving a
person’s mouth being washed out with soap. The person earns this punishment by
cussing or being a complete smartass. First comes the threat, followed by soap being
administered to the tongue- voluntarily or involuntarily. This is very unrewarding to the
person, decreasing their likelihood of future occurrences of the behavior. I’ve had my
mouth ”washed out” with soap before. I giggled as I recalled tasting the bitter hand soap
as it reached my tongue. “How ridiculous?” I thought. I had been punished for either
using language deemed “dirty” or by being “sassy”. My Mema had warned me, or so she
said, before she went through with her threat. There I stood with a glob of soap on the
end of my tongue, my fury burning hotter by the second.
I grew curious, wondering if Mema remembered this particular event. I also
wondered if anyone else had endured this form of punishment. The answers to these
questions couldn’t be hard to find, especially when I had two perfectly good resources;
my Mema, who has a mind sharper than my mind on it’s best day, and my long time
boyfriend, Matt Houghtaling, who grew up in Lapeer, Michigan (but sometimes I’d
swear he is from a different planet, like when he cooks a hotdog in the microwave).
Shelby Pedigo and the Lye Soap
Shelby Pedigo (the wonderful woman I call “Mema“, and will be further referred
to as Mema) remembers the exact threat her mother used. “Mama used to say ‘Quit that
blackguarding or I’ll wash your mouth out with soap.” She mused while cracking a grin.
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“So did you get your mouth washed out with soap for cussing?” This was my assumption
because it was what I had been punished for. Or was it? Actually, now that I think about
it, I can’t recall what I had done to provoke the mouth washing. “No,” she corrected, “for
using dirty words, not cuss words.” I suddenly felt confused. “There is a difference?” I
almost shrieked, leaning in closer to as if it would help me make sense of this. “Well,
sure. A cuss word is taking God’s name in vein. A dirty word is saying ‘shit‘, ‘damn‘,
‘asshole‘, ‘hell‘, or anything along that line. Mama only said ‘shit‘.”
“What in the world is blackgardening?” I had never heard of this term before.
The first thing that came to my mind was racism. “No! It’s blackguarding.” She
informed. We ended up spending the next two minutes trying to figure out what each
other was pronouncing. Finally, she had to spell it out for me. “Anyways, it’s the same
thing as dirty words, but not cuss words.”
“It doesn’t include cuss words?”
“No.” She proceeded to explain another situation resulting in a mouth wash threat. “You
would get your mouth washed out for being sassy, too. When Mama said ‘You’d better
watch your mouth or I’ll wash it out with soap,’ that mean you were being a sassy
smartass.” She snickered and met my attentive gaze. “You were extremely sassy and
smartassed.” She added. “I earned it honestly.” I playfully retorted. “Well,” she trailed
off, smiling thoughtfully. There is no way she could argue with that and she knew this.
I asked Mema to elaborate on the unspoken “rules“ pertaining to the, let‘s say
eligibility for lack of a better term, of the ‘mouthwashees‘. “What exactly is the
’mouthwashing’ age?” I inquired. She stared off, obviously in deep thought. “After they
start talkin’.” She replied matter-of-factly. We shared a laugh. “Is there an age limit or is
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this a forever mother-child privilege?”
“When they leave home-- or when they’re old enough to stop smarttalkin’.”
“When was the first time you heard of this?”
She sat and thought for a second. “I guess the first time I smart talked.” She stated. We
shared another laugh.
“Where did you learn about this?” I asked. “My mother used to say it. I don’t know if
her mother did it, maybe she did. I don’t know. It made me behave. Me and my
brothers.”
“Have you ever had your mouth washed out with soap?”
“Well Lord no! You don’t really do it, you just threaten them.” This took me directly to
my next question. “Have you ever done it before?” A look of confusion spread across
her face. Just as I had anticipated, the confusion was replaced with wit. “I don’t know,
have I?” She grinned.
“Yep. I can remember a time.” I admitted.
“Well then, there you go.”
Now I’m grinning.
My last couple of questions for Mema pertained to her feelings towards this
method of correction. “What made you consider using this, ummm, form of
punishment?”
“It’s not for punishment,” she cut in quickly. “It’s to scare them out of doing what they
were doing.”
“But you did it before.” That halfway came out as a question.
“Yeah, but I only had to do it once.”
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“Did you find it effective?”
“Yes. It only takes one time to teach them a lesson. No one likes the taste of lye soap.”
The soap! I felt like such an idiot. Why had I not thought to ask her about what
type of soap she would get threatened with. I guess it was because I was so shocked that
she had did it but never had it done to her. She could dish it out, but could she take it?
Probably not. “What is so bad about lye soap?” I asked, clueless and obvious.
“It’s made out of animal fat. Mama used to make it from supper’s leftovers.
They didn’t have liquid soap back then. That hasn’t been around that long. Maybe
twenty-five to thirty years. And Mama wouldn’t waste her deodorant soap. We had
powdered detergent that we used for laundry, but you can’t use that.” She explained.
“Looking back, what do you think about the whole deal now?” I asked, wrapping
up my journey to findings. “Well, it did work, “she explained. “But I wouldn’t do it
again. There are other ways- better ways to discipline a child. It did work at one time,
though.”
“So, how did it feel being the threatener and the soaper?” She laughed at my justthought-of terminology.
“As a kid I behaved more. I stopped whatever I was doing and behaved or I knew
my Mama would go through with it. I only had to be threatened and that was it. Never
made it past that. As a mother, I would have to be very irritated. You’d really have to be
acting up.” She concluded the interview discussing how this form of punishment may
now be considered child abuse. She also discussed today‘s children having a lack or
respect for their parents. “Kids don’t have any respect these days. They’re too hard
headed.” Mema lamented.
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Matt Houghtaling and the Bar Soap
Then I interviewed Matt Houghtaling. Earlier I commented that it sometimes
seemed like Matt was from another planet. This is because he does things so much
different than from what I do. I mentioned him cooking hotdogs. He once used a small
bowl of water to cook a hotdog in the microwave. I roll it up in a paper towel and put
thirty seconds on it. When I asked him what he was doing, he just looked at me and said,
“cooking a hotdog. How do you do it.” My way was just as foreign to them. This event
assured me that even if Matt had had his mouth washed out with soap, it was probably a
completely different experience for him. The only theme that would remain would be the
soap and the mouth.
I wasn’t very shocked to find out that Matt, too had had his share of mouth
washings. I wondered if this was once a national phenomena. I wondered if someone
wrote a book about it. Mouthwashing 101. I was so curious to know if his experience
was in any way similar to mine. Matt only had the perspective of a soapee/threatened,
just like me. But does this mean we share the same perspective? I simply asked him
what he could tell me about the time he had his mouth washed out with soap. The
information flowed freely from him. He explained that he learned this from his mother,
who washed his mouth out with soap on several occasions. I gave him an abbreviation of
Mema’s version of the punishment and asked him to compare his version to hers. “You
get your mouth washed out for using dirty words, not for smart talking. Mom would
threaten me like that, She’d say something followed by, ‘… or I’ll wash your mouth out
with soap.’ If I did it again, she would wash my mouth out with soap.”
“Did she use liquid or bar soap?” I gave myself a mental cookie for remembering
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the soap this time. “The bar soap and that made it even worse. She would shove it in
your mouth- you were more than likely to bite down on it. Then she would take it out.“ I
felt like my experience wasn’t near as bad. “You had to say something really bad, like
‘fuck‘ or ‘goddamn‘ or ‘asshole‘,” he continued, “When we got older, like about 12, she
didn’t get as mad about us saying ‘shit‘ or ‘ass‘ or ‘hell‘. You would have to really piss
her off, though,”
“How did it make you feel?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Do you think it was effective.” I asked. He twisted his face into a thoughtful
expression. People make funny faces when they are retrieving memories and then putting
them into words. I have noticed this. “No, I still cuss.” He replied. Well, I didn’t see
that coming but it is a completely logical concept. Come to think of it, I didn’t stop
either.
“Will you use this method on our children?“
“No, it’s gross.“ He said and then announced that it was past his bedtime.
Don’t Cuss, Call Gus
After gathering all of my data from the informant interviews, a few concepts
became a little more clear to me. Bear with me, for I am making up some of these words
as we go. I will start by summarizing the context, the ambiance and mood before, during
and after. In the beginning, the child is angry, as evident to the fact that the child is
cussing/blackguarding or smart talking in the first place. The mother is highly irritated
with the child and his or her actions. She becomes the threatener. The threatener
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threatens the child, who is now the threatenee, firmly and almost from a script. The
script for cussing/blackguarding is a stern request for the child to discontinue the specific
action followed by “or I’ll wash your mouth out with soap.” The script for smart talking
is, “You’d better watch your mouth or I’ll wash your mouth out with soap.” Mema
clarified the difference in the two different occasions and threats. “’You’d better watch
your mouth’ means you were smart talking.” She explained. I still wonder if the
origination of the word ‘blackguard’ had to do with racism. That’s a whole other
fieldwork project. In either event, if the threatenee keeps provoking the threatener, the
threatener becomes the soaper and the threatenee becomes the soapee. Then he or she
gets soaped. And they all live happily ever after.
Regardless of whether liquid or bar soap is used, in both versions the “dirty”
mouth is cleansed. Literally. Whoever thought of this either had a good sense of humor
or was sadistic towards children. Either was, he or she was not very clever.
This positive punishment technique may be effective on some level. Mema said it
worked for her. She learned not to talk “blackguard” around her mother. Her mother is
the only one who threatened her. Matt said it does not work because he still cusses today.
The thing that I find interesting is that Mema only had to be threatened while Matt had
his mouth washed out, yet he is the one that the punishment didn’t effect. I guess some
people are just more easily conditioned.
As I look at it from a psychological aspect, I see that washing a child’s mouth out
with soap could actually be an effective form of positive punishment. After all, a
stimulus (the soap) is present and is intended to be used to decrease a behavior (using
cuss words/blackguarding or smart talking), hence punishment. I guess psychologically,
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it is plausible.
Mema left me with a quote she uses today when someone cusses around her.
When the occasion arises, she recites a little rhyme: “Don’t cuss, call Gus. He’ll cuss for
all of us.”
I would also like to share with you my response to Mema’s “smart talkin’” threat.
When she told me to “watch my mouth”. I would cross my eyes downward, staring at my
nose, and say, “I can’t! My nose is in the way.” This is something I wish soapees would
do in retaliation.
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