How To Fool Your Mom Into Dropping Ye Old F-Bomb

4 Min Read

Have you ever caught yourself daydreaming about your clean-cut mom or dad suddenly cussing like a sailor?

Then today’s your lucky day, sir…

“Are you sick and tired of waiting around for your prim and proper elderly parent to start cussing? Well, today’s your lucky day…”

Yes, I know it sounds like the beginning of your archetypical 90’s late-night infomercial, but unlike those scams, you’ll see soon enough that I’ll actually deliver on my promises.

You see, if you’re anything like me, you can relate to the adult children in this Onion news article, in which their mother seems to have taken up swearing in her elderly years. I remember reading this article back in the day and thinking to myself, “Hmmm…maybe it’s possible that one day my mother will drop a cuss word or two. That would be a decent consolation prize, seeing as how getting her intoxicated is pretty much out of the question.”

Now, this thought was all mirthful and cheeky until it was pointed out to me–by my mom, nonetheless–that this is actually quite common…in loved ones suffering from dementia.

*gulp!*

Umm…on second thought, maybe having a neophyte cussing mother wouldn’t be the unexpected delight that I had always dreamt it to be. And if you, Dear Reader, have any type of soul at all, you, too, will agree that we need a Plan B…

This April Fool’s Day, have I got just the prank for which you’ve been waiting most of your adult life!

Now, this prank is not for everybody, but that is because of logistics and not morality or taste in humor or any nonsense like that. This, my friend, is objectively funny, guaranteed. Let’s review the key ingredients needed to successfully pull this off:

A parent with an iPhone. This might work for other phones, but that exercise is left to the reader.
A parent who uses that phone to text. They need to text, and not just text you–that’s not nearly as fun.
Ideally, they end all their texts with a ‘sign-off’ phrase. In absence of this, other common phrases can be substituted.
Access to said phone. Sadly, this requires geographic proximity to your target–er, I mean ‘parent’. Also, if you don’t know their PIN, you better get on figuring out how to acquire that info. Alternatively, you might be able to unlock their phone with FaceID while they sleep.

Okay, so hopefully you’ve been able to go ‘check…check…check…CHECK!” right on down that list. Perhaps, though, you got a little stuck on the 3rd item, the ‘sign-off’ phrase. It could be something as basic as, ‘Love, your dad’ or (if you’re extremely lucky) ‘In Christ’. In my case…well, I’ll let you take a look at this recent sample conversation with my dear mum:

Did you perhaps notice anything overly consistent about that conversation? Ding ding ding! That is correct: every thought must be ended with ‘Xo’:

Fun fact: the ‘Xo’ also serves as a way to tell whether the other is in distress and/or a kidnapper or other bad actor has the phone and sending the texts: “If there’s no ‘Xo’, then we’re calling the po-po!”

Anyways, so now that you understand what kind of common and recurring phrase we’re after–ideally tacked onto the end of their texts–we can now proceed to fulfilling our profane April Fool’s fantasy.

Step One: After successfully stealing a few moments with the phone and getting into it, go to Settings.

Step Two: Tap on the General sub-menu.

Step Three: Tap on Keyboard.

Step Four: Go to Text Replacement.

Step Five: Tap on the ‘+’ icon to add a new entry.

Step Six: In the Shortcut field, type their beloved sign-off phrase, or any other bit of text you want to auto-magically turn in to potty words. In the Phrase field, type the profanity-laden phrase of your choice. Feel free to be as subtle or as offensive as you desire. In my case, I was inspired by the ‘o’ in ‘Xo’, and felt that it naturally lent itself to ‘Oh, holy fuck!’

Step Seven: Be sure to hit Save, exit out of the Settings app, and return the phone to its original location.

Step Eight: Sit back and enjoy the show! Here’s an example of what might transpire between your parent, and say, another one of your siblings (note: this is a dramatic recreation, as sadly, the original texts have long been deleted for obvious reasons):