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| Our Boomer-In-Charge here at BBHQ, Hershel Chicowitz, writes frequently about current events... from a boomer perspective. He is sometimes funny, sometimes provocative, sometimes a little of both. We hope you get a kick out of our Boomer Essays. |
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Demonstrating conclusively that they are desperate for anything even remotely resembling news, recently "Dateline NBC" ran a segment on "mallspeak." I didn't see all of it, but it was apparently about the vocabulary that teenagers use today. I decided to compare that with the terms we used as kids. So I checked into a teen chat room on AOL to see what is hip today.
I was able to tolerate it for about 45 seconds. In that time, I learned that "all my peeps" means "all my friends." "911S" means "sibling alert"; and "P911" means "parent alert." Of course, I already knew that "LOL" means "laugh out loud"; and several months ago, many boomers informed me that "ROTFL" means "rolling on the floor laughing." With that lead, it does not take much extrapolation then to figure out what "LMAO" means. But "we won't go there" - not here at BBHQ.
That is "cyberspeak" - the abbreviated acronyms of the Internet. Cute, but not particularly interesting to me. While listening to some teens at a nearby mall, I was able to conclude that "homies in the hood" has crossed over racial boundaries. I think Bart Simpson gave us "chill out," and "rad, man"; but "Don't have a cow, man" came long before Bart Simpson was a wet ink spot on the drawing board.
Bart also uses the term "far out"; but he did not originate it, nor did he make it mainstream. Back in the early 70s I think, John Denver hosted "The Tonight Show" for a week or so. Apparently it takes far more than songwriting skills to serve as an articulate host. Every time John was excited or amazed, his eyes would open wide, and he'd blurt out, "Far out!" Well, it did not take long before the audience got ahead of him. Given just a short pause in the dialog, the audience filled in the blanks: "Far out!" Twenty-five years later he commented that that term still followed him around. (Oh, the power of television! ... and boomers!)
A long time ago someone might express pleasure or excitement at an invitation by saying, "Why, I'd be tickled pink"? How 'bout "So's your old man"? Our terms were mostly harmless, but for a while, we seemed fixated on parts of the body. "Up your nose with a rubber hose"; "Stick that in your ear," which, not surprisingly, devolved in the 80's into something having to do with a place where the sun does not shine.
I could write a whole essay on the terms served up by "Laugh-In." You bet your sweet bippie! But my favorite was and still is, "Hey, little girl; wanna' buy a box of cookies?"
Somewhat before my time, the phrase, "He's a dirty bird" was popular. I don't think I want to know the origin of that. I can vaguely remember the term "cherry," meaning OK or terrific. And I remember Robert Redford in "The Sting," which took place in the 30's, saying, "Everything's Jake," meaning everything's OK.
What goes around, comes around. When I was a kid, something really neat might have been called "cool." When it was really, really, cool, it was "hot." Then it was "outta' sight!" Now it is back to "kewl." Rad, man, rad.
One of my high school, would-have-been, could-have-been, but never was girlfriends wrote to me recently and used the term "yikes" to describe my fond recollections of her in one of my essays. I remember that term, and suddenly, I have a great fondness for it.
I remember my mother using the term "geesel-peesel" to express astonishment or frustration. I sure wish she had spelled it for me, at least once. Geesel-peesel... how do you spell that?
The word "boss" has certainly made the rounds. We know who the boss is.... Bruce Springsteen, of course. But as a verb, it means to order someone around. Today we might call a person a "control freak"; in the 60s, he was merely "bossy" - sounds less threatening to me, does it not? But in the early 60s "boss" was an adjective. It meant cool.... or maybe hot.
Speaking of "freak," today we might say that something is freaky. When we were kids, it would have been kookie. And yes, Kookie became a character in the TV show "77 Sunset Strip."
I guess the adjectives "hip," meaning "in," preceded the hippies. They were so far in, they were out - far out!
A fink was a loser. Cartoonist Johnny Hart had the people in his kingdom of ID rise up against their leader with signs that read, "The King is a Fink." Ghoulardi (Ernie Anderson), a local television personality in Cleveland (who went on to become the announcer for "The Loooove Boat") tried to reverse the term, literally; he referred to his good buddies as "knifs." Drew Carey (who has been seen wearing a Ghoulardi T-shirt) is a knif; but not a pure knif. Knifs drank Ghoul-aid; Drew drinks beer. Knifs were very popular in Cleveland, but the term never made it out of northern Ohio. (And no, I never made it to "knif" status.)
Back in the late 50s and 60s things were pretty good. In fact, they were swell. (Remember the tag line: "You can tell it's Mattel; it's swell!) Whatever happened to "swell"?
"He spilled the beans." That means that he said something before he was supposed to. "We wanted to save this for your birthday, but he spilled the beans." I haven't heard that phrase in years.
In the mid 60s, our parents and teachers were "square" - they just didn't get it. Charles H. Brower, one of our elders, was so upset at the mal-appropriation of the word "square" that he wrote an essay about it, and put it on a 45 RPM:
| "Square! Another of the good old words has gone the way of love, and modesty and patriotism. Something to be snickered over, or outright laughed at. Why, it used to be that there was no higher compliment you could pay a man that to call him a square shooter. The ad man's promise of a "square deal" once was as binding as an oath on the Bible. But today, a square is a guy who volunteers when he doesn't have to. He's a guy who gets his kicks from trying to do a job better than anyone else. He's a boob who gets so lost in his work he has to be reminded to go home." |
Quite a commentary, huh? "The Square" became a big hit.
I know how he felt. I am a little upset at the co-opting of the word "gay." I used to be gay; but now I am just happy.
We had a lot of words for people we did not like. Today we might refer to them as dweebs or geeks. Back in the 60s, as I recall, we might refer to them as a dork, a dufus, or a spaz (a derivative of spastic, I think.) In addition to being gay, I was also a borderline dork in high school.
For a while in the 60s, we might say to someone, "Hey man, cool your jets." Today, we would say, "Chill."
We were much more modest and reserved then. I remember when, if you were in a small group and you had to take care of nature's business, you might say, "I'm gonna go see a man about a dog."
Really.
I guess civilians have always had nicknames for the police. For ages we have called them "cops." There is some dispute about whether that comes from the copper badges they used to wear, or whether "cop" is an acronym for Citizen Of Peace or Constable On Patrol. No matter; in the 60s, we referred to them derogatorily as "the fuzz." But that was not enough for the radicals; they propogated the term "pigs." "Pigs off campus! Pigs off campus!" we yelled during the demonstrations. In the 70s, they became the more benign "smokies."
Pigs (the four-legged ones) got a bad rap in the 70s. With the women's movement taking hold, any man who still thought that "a woman's place is in the home" might be referred to as a "male, chauvinist pig." Archie Bunker, in the television show "All in the Family," was the quintissential male chauvinist pig. He would tell his wife, Edith, to "stifle yourself!" That was an Archie original. Archie had a million of 'em. When Edith had some female "plumbing problems," she went to see a doctor that Archie referred to as a "groinocologist."
The fuzz and the pigs notwithstanding, things were real groovy in the 60s, and it showed in our music. The Young Rascals were "Groovin' on a Sunday Afternoon." We had a "Groovy Kind of Love" from the Mindbenders. The Duke of Earl, Gene Chandler, sang, "Well, it's a groovy situation, and a friendly combination; that we should meet, on a night like this." The song was actually called, "That Girl," but everyone knew it as "Groovy Situation." Somebody asked why the newlyweds bought a box of corduroy condoms. Because they wanted a groovy kind of love, that's why.
I could dig that. In fact, the Friends of Distinction went nuts diggin' it: "I can dig it; he can dig it; she can dig it; we can dig it; they can dig it; you can dig it. Can you dig it?"
Things were also mellow in the mid-60s. But by 1966, they must have turned sour. Donovan noted so with a song called "Mellow Yellow."
As I recall, being "bent" meant being drunk, back in the 60s.
When I was in college, we created harmless terms to describe what were sometimes not-so-harmless characterizations. I was occasionally called "coke bottle"; and no, it had nothing to do with the thick glasses I wore. (Hint: see Dr. Rubens' description of a creative use of a 6-ounce bottle of Coca Cola.) If you were just mildly upset, you were "bent out of shape." But someone who was a "pretzel case" had a part of his anatomy twisted in an unusual and awkward position.
If we were unprepared for a class, we might say, "I walked into that classroom with my books in one hand and my hat in the other." When they read this, Tom, Keith, Shellie, Stan, a few others will get a huge laugh out of it. No one else will understand it; of course, that was the idea. (You'll have to pay very close attention to "The Godfather" to get the origin of that particular pearl.)
In the 70s, we also used the term "out to lunch" to describe someone who was hopelessly lost. We claimed we made up the term, but I think it originated in "Along Comes Mary," by the Association: "When we met I was sure, out to lunch; now my empty cup tastes as sweet as the punch." A couple years later, as a graduate student, I created a series of optional lab sessions for those students struggling with the required computer programming class. I called them "lab sessions for the Out-to-Lunch bunch." They were a tremendous hit.
In the late 60s and early 70s, we were "into" things... bags mostly: "Hey man, what are you into? What's your bag?" But some people had negative karma; they gave off bad vibes. They were really, really, reeeeally far out!
In the 70s we talked about "doing your own thing." For obvious reasons, that is a term I would not employ today.
Of course, we had to have a place to do our own thing, so we got a "pad" - an apartment, or place to stay. "I got a pad just outside of the city." When I was a senior in college, we had a pad at a place called Summitt Hill. We renamed it "Slummit Hill." It was not much of a pad; but then, none of them were.
Remember the song called, "Lay a Little Lovin' on Me," by Robin McNamara in 1970? ("Honey, doggone it; I'm depending on it; so lay a little lovin' on me!") Those words were derived from the term, "Lay it on me." Today we might simply say, "So, tell me...."
So, I guess I do not have a problem with the mallspeak of today's kids, whatever it entails. I hope that some day, however, they and their peeps will grow out of it and learn how to speak real English. Most of us did; or at least, we learned how to control our pecularities. And I tell you this: I could die a happy man if I never heard the word "like" again.
Like, put a sock in it.
If you like BBHQ, please help us by buying stuff through our link to Amazon.com:
| The BBHQ Album of the Month is "Old Friends Live on Stage (Deluxe Edition) (2 CD/1 DVD)," by Simon & Garfunkel. If you were fortunate enough to see them in concert last year, I do not have to sell you. The concert was terrific! This album collection includes 55 songs, plus their new recording, "Citizen of the Planet," and one of the songs sung by the Everly Brothers during the concert. The DVD was recorded during their concert in Madison Square Garden in 2003. For any S&G fan, this is a must have! But then, you knew that already, didn't you? |
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The BBHQ Book of the Month is
"Vinyl Highway," by
Dee Dee Phelps. You remember her as Dee Dee, of Dick and Dee Dee.
Together, they took a decade long ride on the rock and roll roller
coaster. It was a heck of a ride! Dick Clark, Quincy Jones, the Beach
Boys, Glenn Campbell, Dionne Warwick, Bobby Vinton... Dick and Dee Dee
rubbed shoulders with all of them. This is her "behind the scenes" story.
It's pretty cool.
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