I recently had to administer the strangest admonishment. I need to talk about it, because it was so bizarre. But, a little background first.

I coach an Academic Triathlon team at my son’s school. It’s a group of five 7th grade boys. Good kids. Nerds, all of them, but that’s the em-oh of the school. My son goes to a bona fide geek school, and it’s a good fit for him. I like the boys, I like coaching the team. I enjoy the company of dorks, because I was one myself. Now I’m not so dorky anymore compared to other moms, so it kind of makes me feel like the queen of the nerds or something, to have survived and conquered geek-dom and have wisdom to pass on to the new generation.

Anyway, a while back these kids started spelling out internet abbreviations in conversation. One of the AT kids would say something and one of them would respond with, “Arr-tee-eff-el” and then laugh. When my husband got home from work, we conferred quickly and quietly in the bedroom closet (our only private place) and came out to gently try to put a stop to this in our son.

“You’re embarrassing yourselves!” I told him. “Those are internet abbreviations, you’re not supposed to SPELL THEM OUT when you talk! You kids have got to make even just a little effort to blend in with the general teen population. I know you kids are brilliant and kind of out of the loop, but you cannot go around doing that, you sillies!”

My son insisted we were old fogies, from the dark ages and didn’t know anything about kids today. To piss him off and illustrate how asinine this was (and show off our own vast knowledge of chat-room talk), we used abbreviations whenever possible all throughout dinner.

“This pasta needs more salt, kay-double-u-eye-emm?”

“Yeah, eye-eye-arr-see, you used to use a different seasoning.”

And so on.

Well, the kids showed us what for when later that evening, we were in front of an earlier TiVoed sit-com and iCarly responds to Sam, “El-oh-el.” Now, I may be old, but I know that iCarly is cool. Dee-aych and I stood corrected.

We spent the remainder of the evening irritating our children by reverting back to the teen-speech of our era.

“There’s a new Top Gear on tonight, CHOICE!”

“Yeah, I tried to tell people about how funny James May is on the show, but everyone thinks he’s grody.”

“People can be so ignorant.”

“To the max.”

My kids threatened to barf. They would have called us hosers, but they don’t know how to use that word properly in context yet.

So, I backed off and took to rolling my eyes privately when the AT kids would spell out letters. Until one of them dropped the bomb—

“Double-u-tee-eff?” One kid asked of another.
“Eff-you.” Another responded.

I whipped around with my eyes ablaze.

“No!’ I shouted. “No, you cannot say that!” I caught myself and what I was yelling about and started laughing a little.

The kids were struck dumb, sending rapid-fire telepathic texted abbreviations to each other with their eyes WTF, oops! How does she know what that means? IDK! NW she chats, she’s like old, so WTF?? Oops! IDK! BC! Just BC!

“Yes,” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I know what that means, and we’ve been through this before. You guys cannot swear in front of me! Got it? That includes abbreviated swearing.”

So, this is what it means to be old. I don’t know who was more shaken up by that ridiculous conversation, me or them.

The first time one of them dropped his viola case trying to get his stuff in the car and shouted, “Oh, shit!” I ignored it. The child had clamped his hands over his mouth and literally ducked as though I would beat him, but I just pretended not to hear it. It was a viola case afterall, those things are goddamned expensive, I’d have reacted with exactly the same word choice if it were me. It spread quickly that I was tolerant of curse words, and really I am. However, they started taking advantage of that, swearing casually all the time and I had to reign them in, explaining that it’s really kind of disrespectful to be swearing openly in front of me, when I’m supposed to be somewhat of an authority figure, and it’s also really a double standard, since if I were to swear openly in front of them like that, I’d get in trouble with their parents and maybe the school. They understood that second part a little more than the respect for my being an “authority figure.” I didn’t like having to curb their swearing, I mean, I LOVE swearing, but it seemed like the responsible thing to do.

When I was a teen, we watched movies like Better Off Dead where it was the epitome of comedic hilarity to watch the parents reading up on the teen lingo, trying to communicate with their children. I’ve got the 411 for now, but I won’t 4EAE, and I wonder … where can I get my hands on one of those books to teach you how to keep up? It’s just a sad turn of events when you realize you’re no longer the one poking fun, but the one receiving the poke instead.

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