Gift of Gab...

Ever wondered what the most common phrase exiting an adolescent’s lip is?

No, I meant besides that one. Seriously, let’s think apart from the expletives shall we?

Having been forced to deal with a slightly younger (and extremely moody) cousin in the recent past, I found myself pondering this.

There seemed to be many possible answers to a question like this… only around half of which would lead to my blog having to be rated with a ‘PG 15’ tag. But you know what… sitting at home day after day with nothing to do but attempt to keep the little menace entertained, makes one’s mind wonder…. So, I had all the time in the world (gosh it seemed like so much more…) to spare this some thought.

I had to base my observation on the subject at hand… and his dealings with his own kind… (Nope… using these words is not an act of oversight), so I had to do what seemed at the time to be the hardest thing in the world….

I had to pay attention to him!

A solution presented itself of course to make my task easier. There’s only so much that even the most persevering of life forms can do to disturb a man with a notebook and pencil intent on his treaty that (might) change the world…. This way he would at least (hopefully) not mistake my proximity to him as an attempt to shower him with my undeserved attention.

If only he knew what I was noting….

I had to be within earshot of him for the greater part of the day. This wasn’t a problem… unfortunately.

I had assumed the toughest part of my study would be gathering information on how the specimen interacted with fellow members of his own herd. This assumption was based on the wildly wrong notion that people do not yell themselves hoarse when on the phone.

The greeting (which was an expletive)… the body of the conversation (utterly weird, childish, immature, moronic and plain old fashioned lame)… and even the signing off (a physically impossible act), it was all screamed for the benefit of every person in a two block radius.

I could hear every word enunciated as clearly as if I did not have my head under the pillow to try and drown out the worst of it.

I began my project on the third day I was stuck with the uncouth young rascal, and concluded it on the fifth. Three days worth of data… which I tallied and finally obtained the desired results….

Here are the top five among them in terms of frequency… obviously having disqualified the ones that involved vivid anatomical descriptions or social stereotyping.

5. “Wow man! That’s so cool!”

It sounds totally harmless and normal doesn’t it? Well try having to put up with that being the only response to every piece of attempted conversation for five days, and you’ll get to where I am at. (In case you are curious… where I am at is wondering if the kid could even say anything else if he tried to…)

4. “Dude…”

A cool word to be sure… that is turned totally annoying what with the fake accent and sheer volume of ‘wannabe-ness’ that some of these kids add to it. Almost becomes as irritating as ‘Kewl’. Thank god he didn’t say that too… at least not much.

3. “Lol”

This abbreviation, initially devised for internet chat rooms, was meant to tell the dude who couldn’t see you that you had ‘laughed out loud’ at whatever he'd just said. You know… if you had gone all ‘Ha ha’ on him. When will the kid learn that it is not at all ‘rad’ to actually say ‘lol’ when having a conversation face to face or over the phone!

2. “Whazzup?”

It sounds utterly sickening, dumb… and feels like a highly provocative invitation to do physical violence. If you ever come up to me five times a day and say it in the most doped way imaginable… you’ve got something coming to you…. If I hear you going ‘Whazzup’ over the phone to your cronies… well, you’re still getting on my nerves.

1. “Not feeling like it”

Believe it or not… this is what I heard the most during the time I spent listening to him. Friends asking him to hang out with them… ‘Not feeling like it’ (Damn! Why can’t you give me some peace for just one afternoon huh?), parents asking him if he wants to go out for dinner… ‘Not feeling like it’. Me asking him if he wants to watch some TV (so that he stops with the ceaseless bugging of yours truly)… and guess what? He is ‘Not feeling like it’.

I tell you… weeks like these make all those expletives I am so trying to avoid posting just bubble up to the surface….

Anyway kid, payback is sweet. Wish you could see what you helped create (instigate more like)… then again perhaps its best that you don’t know.

I do hope he is not on blogger himself… or at least is unaware of link to this page.