Would You Use "Normal" English, Please?

I pride myself in being a little “different“. As long as “different” doesn’t cross the line to being “weird“, my teens are OK with that even!

Every New Year’s, I do more than make resolutions that I try my best to keep! I also determine to “try new new things”. This year I have determined to “try” some fairly strange things (like seeing if I can stay awake for 24 hours straight, and trying clam chowder for the first time… anyone know of what restaurant serves the best?), but most of my decisions are rather sane. (OK, that means they are boring too!)

One of those “sane” things is that I switched from Yahoo to Google for my internet home page! As I’ve only used Yahoo, and as I’m difficult to “teach” new techie things, this was HUGE for me! My husband (patient man that he is) helped me personalize my Google page and make it truly “Denise Portis-ish“. I’m quite proud of my iGoogle, if I do say so myself! I have all of these wonderful little tabs for the different pages, and I’m just a little too tickled about the whole mundane change! One of my iGoogle pages is entitled, “Fun”, where I put silly things, or links that just make me smile when I need a break. On the “Fun” page I added a recommendation from Google that is called: “Slang O’ The Day”.

This morning I woke up and went to my “Fun” page for a quick smile, and couldn’t believe what the first “slang” word was! Steezy! Excuse me, but steezy? Say WHAT? It means “incredibly noteworthy or impressive“. I sat in my chair a full moment trying to wrap my brain around that. I thought these would be words I understood… words I’d heard before! Steezy? If I think something is “incredibly noteworthy”, I simply exclaim, “Wow! That was incredibly noteworthy!” (OK, I probably DON’T say that, but I certainly don’t say “How STEEZY was that?”)

It seems it has something to do with the lingo skateboarders use. It made me realize that we do have some strange “slang” and words in the sub-cultures of our society.

Take the “hearing loss crowd” for example. In writing, people with hearing loss use HL (hearing loss) HA’s (hearing aids), CI (cochlear implants), HoH (hard-of-hearing), etc., a great deal. Both in writing and orally, we use terms like “audi” (audiologist), “hearie” (someone who hears), and “I don’t have my ears on”, to indicate our HA or CI is turned off.

I heard someone at an HLAA (Hearing Loss Association of America) convention say, “I need juice! I need juice!” when their HA batteries had died! I didn’t even have to ask what she meant, and reached in my purse for some extra batteries! Mine (size 13) were much bigger than what she needed (size 11), and she exclaimed, “Good lord, I don’t need THAT much juice!” (smile)

When I was standing in line to meet Heather Whitestone McCallum at another convention, my own batteries died. I exclaimed out loud, “Oh no! I just died!” Unfortunately, this happened right as I got up to Heather! She started laughing and stuck out her hand and said, “I say the SAME THING!”

So I guess it’s ok to have different acronyms and phrases as part of a sub-culture. But could you skateboarders use NORMAL ENGLISH please?