At 3, my son would shout Cinnamon Toast! whenever something went wrong. Cinnamon Toast was the perfect expletive—lots of syllables plus a hard consonant in the middle and end.
For years, our family has worked on coming up with creative ways to express frustration and anger. Instead of relying on the traditional expletives, we’ve created our own list with phrases like, Holy Guacamole!
When I teach writing to tweens and teens, I encourage them to avoid expletives and use more descriptive words. But sometimes life’s challenges need a few expletives thrown at them. Here’s your assignment, writers: compose a poem using creative expletives. In other words, your poem must be suitable for children!
P.S. Toto Poetry has a great collection of poems about using expletives.
