I Can't Say

At a recent poker game I was divvying out some chips and made a slight miscue which I instantly corrected. At the time I announced, very deliberately, "My bad," to establish my responsibility. To which most of the parties at the table squirmed, and another proclaimed, "Sorry, but anyone over a certain age is not allowed to say 'My bad,' especially if it's going to be self-conscious."

I wasn't automatically offended by the squelch; in fact I generally agreed with it, and apologized (with "sorry," not "my bad") by assuring everyone that the utterance was slow and sarcastic. But this led to a discussion of words and phrases which sound uncomfortable emerging from the mouthes of Baby Boomers and older. I don't know how "My bad" became almost as ubiquitous as "basically," but it most likely has Black hip-hop roots. Hip hop has become the Yiddish of the late 20th century, contributing colorful dialectic words that hip (or should I say hip-hop) whites decided to adopt into their everyday vocabulary.

"My bad" is not a very euphonious expletive, but it is short and to the point. Since I live somewhat in isolation from the culture from which it emerged, I hadn't heard its everyday use until it popped up in a very mainstream commercial on a CNBC financial network during the happy '90s (when it was fun to watch the market channels). It was uttered by a white actor playing an accountant, so I took notice of the phraseology as something new but acceptable. Still, it never felt right coming from my lips. Neither did the words "bling-bling," which I understand is now shortened, reasonably, to "bling". I've not uttered the popular verb "dissing," which is pretty old actually, but useful and not too ungrammatical-sounding. (Frankly, from my ivory tower, it'll take a decade for any kind of street argot to penetrate my awareness, unless I decide to watch BET and MTV more often. And by that time there's an entirely new set of expletives and salutary adjectives, and "phat" and "bad" will likely start to mean "fat" and "bad" again.)

Generation X, which follows my own, is famous for its backward baseball caps--everyone thinking they're Yogi Berra--and the word "Dude." I cannot at all bring myself to say "Dude," even at gun point. I'd rather say "My bad" a thousand times. "Dude" makes me entirely self-conscious; I associate it with dude ranches like in the "City Slicker" movies. When I was a kid, "dude" meant a "dandy," dressed up inappropriately to the nines and ordering whiskey sours in a frontier saloon. For me it's not a common term of friendship, like "Man," which I also find a little pretentious, though more contemporary with my Beatnik/Hippie-era upbringing.

Then there's "Sup," which also, as far as I can tell, found its genesis in those beer commercials of the 90s with lunatics screaming in their phones (before they were cellphones) "Whassap!!!???" Thankfully the "Whas," was dropped like a tadpole's tail leading to the abbreviated but inane "Sup?" Though "Sup" is no more innocuous than "How are you," and somewhat less annoying than the incipient "No problem," replacement phrase for "You're welcome." That idiom is pretty obnoxious and I will only use "No problem" when I mean, specifically, that effecting the act that generates the gratitude truly does not cause me difficulty.

I'm extremely grateful that there are some words whose common parlance seems to span generations and never lose currency. The best example of this is "cool," which I am pretty much reduced to using as my default praise word when I'm afraid to lapse into "neat" or "swell" or "swift" or other codger-specific terms. Generation Y's favorite word "sweet" is not too off-putting for me to say, though it doesn't arise naturally. I always thought the word "smooth" would one day replace "cool" in common parlance, but that day hasn't happened yet. Meanwhile I retreat to my literary world where archaic terms still retain a certain hoary respectability, even if they're never uttered or text-messaged into Motorola Razors on the street.

And when I'm on the street, the bill of my cap still faces forward--not backward, nor at a raffish angle. It may pinpoint my generational loyalty, but it also helps prevent skin cancer from growing on my nose.