Bill's Musings

A while back, the Concise Oxford English Dictionary added 400 new words to their version of the dictionary. Words like ‘re-tweeting’, ‘cyberbullying’, ‘sexting’, and one of my personal favorites, ‘woot’, as in ‘Woot-woot, I just lost 5 pounds’,  or maybe, ‘Woot-woot, I just got caught sexting while I was retweeting someone that ended up cyberbullying me!’

Glancing quickly through the 400 or so words they added, one of the common denominators that  I noticed is that a large portion of these words owe their existence to today’s newer technologies. Twenty years ago, there was no such thing as sexting, let alone texting. Cyberbullying wasn’t even thought of, unless by some geeks dreaming about creating robots to bully their own tormentors back, and if you re-tweeted, it merely meant you were answering your pet Budgie ‘Tyrone’ back.

This all struck me as funny, in an odd sort of way. I was driving through North Bay with Alex the other day, and I needed to call someone. My truck has Sync, so I had to press the button and say ‘call shop!’. Alex had his headphones on, and so said to me, ‘What?’, to which I responded , ‘I was talking to the truck!’

And that, my friends, is what we have sunk to as a society. I told my son to keep it down, because I was currently having a conversation with my vehicle. Lord love a duck, I’m talking to my truck.

What’s sad is Alex didn’t even take it personally. For him, as with all the young people in our lives who are tech savvy, doing weird stuff like this is just part of the game. I’m just getting used to the fact that there are no dial phones any more, while they’re wondering just what the hell is a dial phone?

Mackie, my youngest, is particularly smart-assed about these things. He’ll sit there and say, ‘Dad…tell me about the days you used to listen to music on compact discs!’. Little creep. One of these days I’m going to show him an 8-track machine and make him listen to some Elvis or Ray Stevens. If that doesn’t send him into seizures, then I’m not doing my job.

The Oxford dictionary has also recognized OMG, LOL, and even the typed symbol for ‘heart’ (as in I ♥ you!) as a word. One word, ‘cougar’, which used to mean a furry lion-type creature to us old fogies, now mostly means a 35+ years old lady who dates much younger men. ‘Social Media’ is also a term which has made it to the big leagues. And so, OMG, wouldn’t you know it that some cougars use social media to do some of their hunting? LOL!

Good grief, lobotomize me now. Am I going to have to change my vocabulary in order to function? Do I go to the place where I get my medication and say, ‘Listen, I tweeted my order to you cougars…OMG, is it ready yet? If it is, then ♥, but if it isn’t, it’s gonna be all over Facebook!’ LOL, JK!’ I think not. That would be a sure way to get Viagra added to my sleeping pills, keeping me up at night when I should be sleeping!

Hey….I just made an unintentional joke….LOL!!