wtf is palimpsest?

Ok, I confess.

It took me a while to figure what that meant. I can usually get an idea of what something means by the context, like when really smart people use big words because they have a tendency towards sesquipedalian loquaciousness.

But this generation beats us all. Well, maybe not all. I mean poor Shakespeare started out by writing,

“Nay, and I tell you that, Ill ne’er look you in the face again: but those that understood him smiled at one another and shook their heads; but, for mine own part, it was Greek to me.

And it became – “I dunno what he said.”

I think somewhere Shakespeare cry-eth.

So when The Oldest first starting saying things like jsssh, sus, or derpy, I thought he’d fallen on his head really hard-like. That he would break out into uncontrollable giggles after saying ‘Billy Mays’, well, that just confirmed it. He must have a concussion. Or a brain tumor.

However, his marks remained great, he could still pack the dishwasher with machine-like precision and he could still quote every funny phrase spoken in Adventure Time, so something else was going on.

That something turned out to the, (big F..ing surprise), the internet.

Ayyyyy

In my times, it would have been TV. I think I went through a Fonz phase. Aaaay!!!

I even remember using such words as grody, rad and awesome (ok, I still totally use that last word a lot,) so maybe I shouldn’t be that surprised that a whole new vocabulary has been vomited from our media.

I mean, hey, I now use OMG, LOL and WFT all the time. It’s part of my lexicon.

So I kinda thought I was still hip (though even by using the word ‘hip’, it kinda shows how exactly un-hip I am.) I thought I could keep up on the new slang, the new abbreviations, and the new phrases. I thought if I watched Hunger Games, played Minecraft and listened to Nicki Minaj, I would be ok.

Turns out, I needed to be watching more You Tube. Like other people playing video games. Or squirrels hiding nuts in a dog’s fur. Or babies doing cute baby things.

Yes, it’s brown.

But that’s only the surface. If you really want to know what’s going on, you need to watch You Tube Poop.  (More on that in the next blog),. It’s where he gets most of the new words come from. (Like meme). It’s where old words are perverted or subverted. (Like Sus or Joj.) It’s where technology is transforming our language. (Like dragging out the sounds in a word – Intellllllllllligent.)

Honestly I don’t get most of it, but derpy, ah, there’s a word I get. In fact, I’m starting to use it. It’s a wonderful word. Awkward, weird, foolish, silly, funny. It’s all of those in one word. I love it. Plus, it sounds like it means. Derpy.

So maybe that’s my defense. I’ll use sus and derpy and drag out the sounds of certain words until it’s no longer something the kids own, we adults have own it, too. And what better way to kill the cool factor of anything than by having your mom or dad say it.

I think I would have thrown up if my dad had said, have a gnarly day at school, dude.

But maybe that’s my best defense against this onslaught of newness.  It’s how the Chinese beat the Mongols. They just absorbed them and made them less cool.