Where have you been?

I am reading "Just So Stories" by Rudyard Kipling the famous English author at the moment and it is a bit ironic how nicely it fits into our discussion about naughty words and how they change through time and culture. This book is a collection of short stories concerning the origin of various things Kipling would tell his children when they were young. For example, how the elephant got his long trunk or perhaps how the camel got his hump. The story I would like to focus on is "How the Leopard got his Spots". The story tells how the leopard and his Ethiopian friend would hunt zebra and giraffe until one day they went missing. The zebra and giraffe had hid in the forest and developed stripes and spots. They were not found for a long time but when they were they were forced to tell their secret. The Ethiopian quickly painted his whole body black to better hide in the shadows but the leopard couldn't decide what he wanted. He didn't want stripes like the zebra, but he also didn't want large spots like the giraffe. The Ethiopian gave leopard small spots with his fingertips which still had wet black on them and the story finishes like this...

"Now you are a beauty!" said the Ethiopian. "You can lie out on the bare ground and look like a heap of pebbles. You can lie out on the naked rocks and look like a piece of pudding-stone. You can lie out on a leafy branch and look like sunshine sifting through the leaves; and you can lie across the centre of a path and look like nothing in particular. Think of that and purr!"

"But if I'm all this," said the Leopard, "why don't you go spotty too?"

"Oh, plain black's best for a nigger..."

Man, some old people have no tact.

A photo showing graffiti done right. This was taken in Wuppertal Germany along the banks of the Wupper river.