College Times

Issue date: 3/19/09 Section: Blogs

I spend a lot of time thinking about words - words that are fun to say, words that look good on paper, words artfully rendered, words that sound gross or funny.

I don't know if it's because I'm a writer or if it's because I'm just a word person.

I'm starting to think I'm becoming a bit out of touch with popular culture. I'm a senior in college and, at 21, I'd like to think I'm still very young. But apparently that's not the case.

My roommate has a 14-year-old nephew. He's a freshman in high school. Every few months, he and his friends infiltrate my apartment for a night and get that teenage boy smell deep into my couches because they, very cutely, want to ride their bikes in Tempe the following day.

Awwww.

But it's not so cute when they bring their 14-year-old curse words into my home. Granted, they're the same ones my roommate and I use pretty much anywhere except around my parents, but they sound so much worse coming from their little boy mouths.

Cuss words aside, they also bring their 14-year-old English into my home. If you want to call it that, anyway.

As a precursor to this story, I want to tell you that these kids are white boys from Gilbert. My roommate's nephew will tell you that he's Mexican, and although both of his parents are Mexican, he has blonde hair and blue eyes, which sounds pretty white to me.

The following are words I heard last night:

Mob. To mob is to go somewhere, presumably in a group. It's the 2009 equivalent to 2002's "roll," which makes a lot more sense to me. You can roll out on roller skates. You can say "let's rock and roll" to indicate going somewhere. Mob, on the other hand, sounds angry. You can be a part of the Russian mob. You can be part of an angry mob. And apparently, you can mob to IHOP at 9 p.m. on a Sunday, which is exactly what they did.

Dip. To dip is to leave a place. My high school memory reminds me that "bounce" was once the equivalent to "dip." But as stupid as bounce is, dip makes me furious. It reminds me of dipping tobacco. Also, the pure sugar candy Fun Dip I ate as a kid. That's not a good combination.

But maybe these words make me so angry because I've never heard of them, making me old and out of touch. My roommate's nephew's eyes glazed over in dismay when I told him I had never heard these stupid words.

"You've never heard of dip?," he says condescendingly.

"No, I've never heard of dip," I retort.

To be fair, though, we were watching "Family Guy" and I had to tell them what Peter meant when he paused and said he "BM'ed."

Bowl movement.

"What does that mean?"

"Shit. He took a shit."

You have to love the circle of life. It's a beautiful thing.

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