FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER!

I had a memory pop into my head this morning. I was nine months pregnant at the grocery store, in line waiting for the checker to finishing ringing up my groceries. I might’ve had a pre-schooler with me. The bag boy looked at my protruding belly and said, “You look like you’re ready to pop. “

My first reaction was ugh, how vulgar and rude. Little did I know that his statement was the latest way for celebs and magazines about them to talk about being very pregnant. Baby Daddy and Baby Mama were also just coming into the lexicon. After all, it was three decades ago. No one was saying baby bump yet.

Is it because I am preparing my daughter’s birthday box to be mailed to the East Coast that I had that memory flash? Is it because I was subconsciously reflecting on how language is ever changing? Thirty years ago no one answered thank you with no problem. Now it seems that everyone under a certain age says that and not you’re welcome.

Only old people say you’re welcome as a heartfelt comment as opposed to no problem, which somehow seems to mean I only had to look up from my phone for just a second.

In my mother’s day, people didn’t even say the word pregnant. That was much too vulgar. Instead, it was expecting and before that, with child.  I just visited her the other day at her care home. She was trying to label the 88-year-old man who zoomed over to talk to me when he rolled out of the elevator in his wheelchair. He was a womanizer even from his rolling seat. My mother called him a ladies’ man, much more polite than womanizer.

In my house growing up we weren’t allowed to say any swear words, not even butt. We said bottom. We couldn’t say fart. Instead, we said pass gas. The first time I heard a grown woman use the expression pissed off, I was horrified. We weren’t allowed to say piss (pee) and of course not pissed off (angry).

I have a guy friend who uses vulgar language around me from time to time. He doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with it. It’s all in how you’re raised.

We weren’t allowed to say penis or vagina. When The Vagina Monologues came out, I was shocked. Then Madonna sang Like a Virgin, and I was mortified. When Cardi B. and Megan thee Stallion sang WAP, I thought the civilized world as we know it had come to an end.

The radio in my little Chevy Trax is stuck on the KBLX station. All the rest of the stations get too much static. It’s a crap radio but rather than having it replaced, I have learned to listen to rap music. Every now and then they’ll throw in a Pointer Sisters or En Vogue song, but mostly it’s rap. And a lot of rap is just plain nasty. 

But not if you were raised with it. I wasn’t. I have friends who wouldn’t go see Hamilton because it was all rap. That’s a whole different level, with the genius of Lin Manuel Miranda. He wrote rap for the whole world, so it’s only occasionally nasty.

Language changes constantly. I had a childhood neighbor named Gay. I often wonder how she feels about her name being claimed by a whole group of people. The meaning of pride, bad, sick. The meaning of Alexa. The meaning of meh, and meta, and surfing the net. Dark web, upgrade, download, virus.  The list goes on and on.