I was exposed to vulgarity from as early as I can remember due to having an older troublemaker brother who had a love for rap, so I had already heard everything long before ever South Park ever premiered. Even as a young dude, I totally ‘got’ and loved everything about South Park and its crazy randomness.

That reminds me, Christmas of ‘97—the year South Park came out—quickly turned awkward when my mom, who only ever caught a slight glimpse of South Park’s vulgarity, mentioned casually to everyone that it was my current favourite show. I was really hoping that none of the adults present would be familiar with it, but one of them, my mom’s BF at the time’s niece’s husband, was. For the rest of the night he kept saying to me ‘I can’t believe you watch South Park! I like it too, but I’m a lot older than you!’. Some people asked him what made it so ‘bad’ but he, fortunately, couldn’t really go into detail as some super old seniors were present. So my mom, thankfully, likely assumed it was only about as bad as The Simpsons.