December 25, 2024 “It has a hype vibe. No cap. It’s a total mood.” That’s slang for, roughly, “The experience had high energy. I’m not kidding. I’m feeling it.” I love slang. I remember thoroughly enjoying studying slang and the evolution of language when I was an English major in college. Now, however, I enjoy it for an entirely different purpose. I love slang because of the reactions I get from my son, Jake, when I use it. “That’s cringe,” he may say, adding to my slang slinging, or “just stop.” He may give me an eye roll. Why is it “cringe” when I use language he hears every day from his friends or classmates? I think it’s because it sounds unnatural coming from me. To him, I’m old. I am, in fact, old enough to be his mother. I also have a normal style of speaking. My normal speech doesn’t involve phrases like, “no cap.” I thought of that as my son and I journeyed all around Texas on a football-centered vacation last week. I don’t think we went a single day of the vacation without someone telling us to “have a blessed day” or to “have a blessed Christmas,” or without someone saying, “God bless!” to us or someone nearby. To us, it was noticeable. We don’t hear people talk about God or blessings in, for example, a sports card shop around here. That happened in Texas. To people around us there, people mostly from Texas or who lived there for some time, I’m pretty sure that’s normal speech. No one there seemed to notice. Hearing about God in Texas is no different than Jake hearing phrases like, “that’s lit” (which means, “that’s awesome”) in school. Jake and I found ourselves doing it. “God bless,” we’d say walking away from small-talk conversations with business owners or people around us. I’m hoping we can keep God in our common speech. It was nice to have Him there with us. It seems fitting to talk about God being present in conversations in this week we celebrate him being physically present in the world, as we celebrate the birth of Christ. From all of us at the North Country Catholic, we pray you have a blessed Christmas and new year. “No cap.”
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