I can give cussing tips because early experience made me somewhat of an expert. When I was young my sister and I were allowed to walk the block to our elementary school to play on the outdoor equipment. My favorite set of monkey bars stood beside a court where older boys played basketball. I’d scramble up as high as I could then perch there to watch. And listen. And learn. After warming up the boys would remove their shirts. Around each neck the sun glinted off a gold crucifix pointing downward toward the slight swale between their adolescent pectorals. Their mouths loosened up with their muscles and my vocabulary lesson began—effing this and sh*tting that. Sometimes they dribbled the words effortlessly; sometimes they shot them with force. But for me this was also a lesson in characterization: Catholic boys cuss. Eventually I learned we all cuss in one way or another. From Dennis the Menace’s “Creepers, Mr. Wilson” to characters that roll about in a virtual verbal manure pile,...