Teen Speak

When Angel moved in with me last June, I found myself quickly thrust back into the world of Teen. Teen Drama, Teen Angst, Teen Fun, and Teen Speak. I had always thought that I had kept myself fairly "current" when it came to teen lingo, but apparently I was sadly mistaken.

My first clue to my complete and total cluelessness was when I started receiving text messages from my new daughter. "Cn yoou plz get meh a hmbrger?" My immediate thought was, "Oh, this poor girl! She can't even spell! How did she ever make it to high school?!?" (Actually, my first thought was, "Huh?" but after some deciphering, I figured it out.) After frantically wondering where I could find a tutor for her during the summer, she assured me that she did know how to spell. She even pulled out some of her previous year's schoolwork to prove it. Her excuse for the lousy spelling? "I like to be different."

After several months of translating teen text, it became second nature to me. I stopped flinching at every "meh" and "yoou." After a while, I barely even noticed it. It still drives my BFF crazy though. Katie and Angel have a love/hate relationship. Katie is constantly harping at Angel for her lousy grammar, and Angel is constantly thinking of new and even more irritating creative ways to annoy Katie. :-) ShE dOeS tHe WhOLe fUnKy CaPs ThInG. She spelz thgz weerd and uzez lotz of z's. I love reading their banter back and forth. Pretty funny stuff. Katie will sometimes go as far as calling me to complain about it... and Angel just sits there and quietly giggles. :-)

Just when I finally grew accustomed to Angel's bizarre spelling habits she joined Facebook, and her "status updates" confused the heck out of me. I can't remember them verbatim, but I do remember responding, "Child, I don't know what the heck you just said, but it doesn't sound very appropriate for someone your age. It doesn't even sound legal! I'm just gonna say, 'no, ma'am!' and leave it at that." She laughed that they were song lyrics. That's all fine and dandy, my dear. I'm all for promoting the Arts. But you don't see me setting my status updates to the lyrics of "Baby Got Back" or that "I Touch Myself" song that they used to play years ago. NOT APPROPRIATE!!! Even MySpace has a default mood of "crunk." WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?!? I've been so confused.

Angel has tried (bless her heart) to educate me on the art of teen slang and texting shorthand. When she had to move into a different foster home in January (LONG story that I'm sure I'll tell eventually when I'm not wanting to threaten bodily harm to a certain therapist, some caseworkers, and other equally-infuriating adults), our texting, emailing, and Facebooking really took off. It wasn't until recently that I realized just how accustomed to the "language" that I had become...

It was just before Katie guilted me into joining Fat Class. She was still eating lunch with me every day. And she was LATE. Much to my chagrin, the thought that ran through my head was something along the lines of, "OMG, Katie! H'ry up! I'm HELLA hungry!!! F'real! WTF is taking yoou so long!?! Come eat wit meh!!!"

You have GOT to be kidding me! What SANE 35-year-old woman uses "hella" in a sentence?!? Don't even get me started on the "OMG"s or the fact that I was actually spelling (and I use that term loosely) "meh" and "yoou" out in my head. I bravely admitted my thoughts on Facebook (might as well fess up... bring smiles to the world and all...), to which Angel immediately replied, "OMG, Mom! I s'rsly jst LOL-ed in frnt of my BF! I nvr do that!" ...and I totally understood every "word."

BC4BC!!! (That means, "If you comment on my blog, I'll comment on yours." ;-)