I hope there are exceptions to that rule!

When I was about 10, my mother called me inside from a game of softball we neighborhood kids were playing across the street, and sat me down in a living room chair.

"I've just had a phone call from Mrs. Wilson," she began. (Mrs. Wilson was the mother of Bunny, a 9-year-old friend of mine who lived in a nearby house in Normandy Lane, where we lived in Larchmont, New York)

Well, of course I had nothing to say for myself except, "Sorry, I didn't mean anything by it. I won't do it again," meaning, I won't use any more bad language, at least in public. There are, of course, several levels of bad language, from "d--" all the way up to and including the infamous "f" word.

Back in 1951, I don't remember the specific word that caused Mrs. Wilson to call on behalf of her son, but I can't remember using any disreputable words besides "d--" and "h--."

My father used both those words quite freely, despite my mother's useless warning, "Rodney, watch your language, please!"

"H--, yes. And you're d-- right about Sid Caesar. He's a d-- riot!."

That was daring language back then in the early 1950s! Television, which would play the role of language arbitrator for the general public from the moment of its introduction in the late 1940s to this very day, contained nothing like it then.

And I must say I found it odd for Saturday night TV to be so lily white, when my parents and Mr. and Mrs. Bellamy -- good upholders of middle-class respectability, all -- were h--ing and d--ing to their hearts' content at their Bridge game down in our breakfast room.

Today, when I, from time to time, come across a band of 10-year-olds, the first thing that strikes me is the vulgarity and nonchalance of their language.

And I wonder where the heck they get the "f" word. And then I think, they might get it from their parents, or from the films they see in theaters or from magazines. It's everywhere.

I think the fact is everyone knows the "f" word and plenty of others, but until fairly recently we've all, for the sake of civility, recognized the importance of leaving them out of our everyday conversation and writing.

It used to be an unwritten code of behavior, but nonetheless powerful.

(He might, for instance, have his mouth washed out with soap, or sent to his room without dinner if he violated it.). The "f" word was not on daily display, the way it is today.

I'm a firm believer in the First Amendment to the Constitution: "Freedom of Speech/ Freedom of the Press" But I also recognize that the First Amendment is indirectly responsible for the flood of vulgarity that has long since swept across this country.

And I think our constant immersion in this kind of language and behavior, whether it be on the screen or in our daily life, is responsible for the dulling of our senses.

Take, for example, the immensely popular (it just ended its tenth year recently) show on TV, "Friends," a weekly sit-com about a group of six twenty-something boys and girls who live together in a New York apartment and occasionally switch partners.

The basic plot of nearly every show is how one "friend" gets another into bed with him/her. Double-entendres abound, and sexual intercourse is the subject of all clever but clear conversation.

Is it objectionable to me? H--, no! I eat it up.

Yes. No doubt about it. NBC, the network that broadcasts the show, would be getting boatloads of letters demanding they take it off the air.

My theory is that as more and more "dirty" words become commonly acceptable to the public, the treasury of them diminishes until the day when there are no more dirty words. Every word will be a dirty word.

We'll all be so desensitized that no one will complain.

And, after watching eighteen episodes of "Law and Order" per week, we will be so desensitized to violence that a criminal might break into our house, murder our spouse and dog, leaving them in pools of blood, and we, upon discovering the crime, would pop a TV dinner into the oven, then sit down and watch an episode of "Friends" before notifying the police.

We'll have come full circle.