My mom grew up in rural Michigan in the 1940s, when almost everyone was a churchgoer and people used lots of euphemisms when swearing. So instead of the exclamation "God!" they'd say "gosh!" Instead of "hell!" they'd say "heck!" And though the exclamation "holy Moses!" isn't taking the Lord's name in vain, even that sometimes got watered down to "holy moly!"
So I loved this joke:
Q: What happens to people who don't believe in gosh?
A: They go to heck.
But yesterday something else happened to remind me of all this. A computer science student whose native language is not English wrote that they were going to a "heckathon". That's a great name for a hellishly hectic programming event!
