Sometimes I feel silly writing parenting blog posts. Mostly because they’re about my teenage daughter, and I am fully aware of the fact that I am way too young to have a teenage daughter. But I have her, and like it or not*, she’s here to stay.
Despite my beauty and youth, however, I am often made to feel old and out of touch by many elements of my daughter’s day-to-day life. One such element in my apparent loss of fashion sense – the childish fantasies I had of sharing a wardrobe with my someday daughter never came to pass, mostly because I wouldn’t be caught dead in what she likes (and vice versa, I’m sure, but I’m pretty hot so I don’t worry about it that much).
What’s really made me feel a million years old recently though is the slang I hear coming out of her face. It’s just so stupid that I want to eat nails. Here are a few examples:
- Legit. Legit is a word that teenagers nowadays are using in inappropriate contexts, to emphasize the… legitimacy of their statements. For instance: “Okay so when I got off the bus I legit stepped in a puddle,” or “that boy is such a nerd, he legit plays chess in the caf.”
- Awks. Abbreviation for the word awkward. Often used in its place, or on it’s own as a one-word indicator of just how ridiculously fucking awkward they are, feel or consider the situation to be.
- ROFL. Now we all know what this means on the internet – Rolling on the Floor Laughing. It’s been around since day one. But what you might not know is that kids are now verbally saying ROFL instead of actually rolling on the floor laughing. They pronounce it “raw-full“. They usually say it with a straight face to demonstrate how “scene” they are and then get very angry when you implement Operation ROFL’s Plan B (forced rolling/laughing by way of armpit tickle).
- Loafting. I actually overheard my daughter use this term (via eavesdropping) a few weeks ago in a discussion with her girlfriend about how lazy said girlfriend’s boyfriend’s best friend’s little sister is. “Everytime I see her at school she’s just loafting around in the halls…” was as much as she was able to get out of her mouth before I burst through the door and demanded to know what the hell that stupid word meant. She looked at me like I was a third-grade dropout and replied, “it’s not even slang, Mom. Look it up. It means a slothful person who just bums around doing nothing.” I stared at her in disbelief before replying, “DO YOU MEAN LOAFING? IS THAT THE WORD YOU MEAN? YOUR ENTIRE SHIT-FOR-BRAINS GENERATION ADDED A SUPERFLUOUS LETTER T TO A PERFECTLY FUNCTIONAL WORD AND YOU’RE LOOKING AT ME LIKE I’M THE CRAZY ONE? Blahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
- True. Another real word used inappropriately, most often to convey assent or agreement. Me: “Gwen Junior, your turquoise Manic Panic hair dye has stained the bathroom sink. Go scrub it right now or you can’t go on the internet.” Gwen Junior: “True.”
Someday, I’ll be cool again – when my daughter’s my age and she’s busy freaking out over how stupid her kids sound. Silly kids and their jibber jabber. Back in my day…
* Most of the time I like it… she’s generally pretty rad.
