Sunday, November 15, 2009

I think I broke my hipster

At the risk of sounding really old and really stodgy, I need to vent a little bit about...well...stuff we say. To be more specific, as of late, I've really noticed how we adults pick up on what the kids are saying—but usually not until the kids have stopped saying it at least six months previous.

Here are a few examples of what I've heard, or overheard, people over thirty, blurting out:

1) Approximately 32-year-old woman on the bus, talking on her phone: "Dude, that sunset is hella sick."
Analysis: Why are you describing the sunset in medical terms? Well, I guess it really was a beautiful sunset, maybe even so sick it was feverish.

2) Approximately 39-year-old guy bumping into another guy on the bus: "Sorry, man. My bad."
Analysis: This is another example of grammatical evolution, where adjectives, crawling along for millenia as subordinate modifiers,  learn to stand on their own as nouns.

3) Approximately 41-year-old guy, who was bumped into by hipster mentioned in item 2) above: "It's all good."
Analysis: It's never all good. If it were, we all would have been riding unicorns instead of public  transportation.

4) Approximately 35-year-old woman, agreeing with something her seat-mate on the bus pointed out:
"I know, right?"
Analysis: Completely nonsensical. It's sort of like saying, "I agree. Asparagus?"

And we don't just ride the caboose of what the kids say, it's also how they look. Back in the early Nineties, I decided to stop getting my hair cut; not even a trim. I grew it out between July of 1992 and May of 1996. By mid-1994, I was a sensitive, ponytail-sporting, John-Lennon-glasses-wearing, Seattle grungester. Little did I know that grunge music and long hair had been dead for a couple of years, and that the kids were now waxing their mopeds with their old flannel clothing.
I still remember looking in the mirror that early May, 1996 morning, and thinking, "Snap! I look hella ridiculous. I really wish one of my filthy posse would have given me the 411 on this whack do."

No comments :

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.