Being a teenager of the 70's we used many a slang word to start or end our sentences. Everything was "cool" and if it was exceptionally cool it could also be classified as "far out, man!"
My Dad would ask me when I said 'cool', how cold was it. Or 'far out', how far. Of course, with those questions he would receive the eye roll of someone who wondered how he ever got to be his age without being, well you know, 'cool'. I asked him one day, "Didn't you ever say anything like that way back when?" He thought for a moment and said "Keen". I thought that was bodaciously far out and after that he quit with the 'how' questions.
My grandkids use lots of them today. 'Dude' being one of the most used, 'awesome', 'cool beans', and 'freaking', just to name a few. I do not like "freaking" very much because we all know what it is substituting but I'd be lying if I said I never used it. Plus, I've never quite understood the 'cool beans' but do use it from time to time so I can continue to communicate with this younger generation. But like my Dad, there are a couple that bug me.
The first would be starting a comment with "I'm sorry, but". My thoughts are no, you are not sorry or you wouldn't have said it in the first place so don't apologize when you don't mean it. The second would be, "just sayin'". Really? It's rather obvious that you just said it, is it really necessary to tell us something we already figured out?
I try to keep those thoughts in my head so that I can avoid the 'what planet did you come from' eye roll. Sometimes though, they just slip out and I am rewarded with the same look I dished out years ago. I remember, way back when, cruising around town, observing some of the big old houses and making the declaration "See that big old house! There's only two old people who live there!"
Yes, now I'm one of the old people in the big old house. But you know what? I think that's totally freakin' awesome, dude.
Cool.....these are awesome.
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