Just Sayin'

The minute I allow a bit of current lingo to enter my vocabulary, written or spoken, the boy hastens to inform me that no one says that anymore. This is nearly always false information designed to prevent me from embarrassing him. Example. The other day, after a random LOL on Facebook he raised the issue. So I quick texted our daughter--10 years older than the boy, but still young and in the know about these things. Surprised and miffed that he'd attack an expression she still uses, she dismissed him as "crazy," and  gave me the green light on LOL. Perhaps what the boy fears is that I'll become a loltard, which urbandictionary.com defines as "a lamer who over uses LOL and its derivatives after almost every comment, which are almost exclusively non-humorous." This is not the case. I tend to be stinting with my LOLs, never use the derivatives and often opt for the more traditional hahaha.

The girl calling the boy crazy provides the perfect segue to the now popular expression insane or would if insane still retained its original meaning. Instead, insane has morphed into something along the lines of what was once groovy and has since been awesome, excellent, rad, righteous, cool, sick, badass, fresh and fly. One of my favorite recent compliments came indirectly from the boy's drum teacher (a young and undeniably cool individual). He described my iPod collection as insane. The boy came home and said, "Mom, John said your iPod is insane." Though he said it with a sort of grudging admiration, I was immediately insecure. "Is that good or bad?" I asked. The eye roll. "It's good, Mom, it's good." Whew.

Cool, which I have used to describe John, appears to be one slangy word that spans generations. You hear it uttered all the time, comfortably and correctly by nearly everyone in any age group. Anyone can use it and it sounds ok. And it always means the same thing, as wikipedia puts it, possessing a certain favorable aesthetic. Of course, you will have your lamers who can't leave well enough alone and insist upon expanding cool to cool beans, rendering themselves instantly uncool or totally lame. Saying cool beans is what's known these days as a fail. The Mayor and I, however, are not permitted to utter the word fail in this context.We've been read the riot act. The boy won't even say it himself. Apparently its use is reserved for the lamest of the lame. Who knew?

Hot, which, as the traditional opposite of cool should logically be a bad thing is actually, in many ways, better than cool. It is perfectly possible to be so cool that you are also hot. I have no personal experience with this phenomenon, but can readily see how it might happen. Unfortunately, I never wore enough black to be cool until I became middle-aged and overweight, factors which, in and of themselves, seem to have eliminated my potential as either cool or hot. Hey, at least I'm not a loltard.

Yesterday's man, as in "hey man, what's up?" has been usurped by dude, bro and now brah. Dude is more nuanced than man ever was and is often used as a form of address, an expression of shock or even disapproval. Instinctively, I know that I'm not a person who should be saying dude, so I don't say it. Similarly, but more because I just hate it, I don't use the expression stoked --an alternative to my generation's excited, psyched, or pumped. People who use the word stoked, always seem to pronounce it with that 80s valley girl accent. Thus, to my ear, those who say it tend to sound like idiots.

On the other hand, one has to respect both the brevity and versatility of today's seriously. All by itself, it replaces a number of multi-word expressions like you've got to be kidding, are you for real, no way, and oh, come on. The trick with seriously is to first say it interrogatively and then follow up by saying it declaratively. Exaggerated facial expressions are important in the delivery of seriously--you need a look that gets across one of the aforementioned multi-word expressions or if you prefer a simple WTF. Sometimes I use seriously myself. That, or it's closely related and identically delivered really. What does the boy think of this? IDK. And what's more, IDC.