You all know how much fun can be had from laughing at old people complaining about how certain words meant something different ‘in their day’? ‘When I was young, gay meant happy’ that kind of thing?
Now imagine you’re at a 13th birthday party. The birthday girl (she might be your daughter) has just finished opening all her presents. Keen to see what she’s received, you say:
‘Come on then, show me your booty.’
Cue gales of teenage laughter and a mock-shocked ‘Mother! Please!
Well, when I was young…
3 November, 2008 at 1:53 am |
Darling, you’ve been away for an age. No doubt because you’ve been busy preparing for your daughter’s birthday party all this time. I was shocked – shocked, I tell you – when my 8-year-old niece recently told me how she and her friends celebrated their birthdays. I had to put on a Yorkshire accent and everything to convey my disapproval.
3 November, 2008 at 7:47 pm |
Hah! Definitely a laugh I needed this morning
Though I admit I’d enjoy taking my mother to England and not warning her about the difference in meaning of the word “fanny”…
6 November, 2008 at 10:14 am |
Do you get ILY in your house. The rough translation is not I love you but ‘Give me 20 quid you sad old woman.’
7 November, 2008 at 9:59 am |
BiB, I know exactly what you mean! ‘Pizza and ice-cream?! In my day we ‘ad to mek do wi’ hot gravel!’
‘HOT gravel? Luxury! When I were a lad, we did a 14 hour day down t’pit and if we were lucky we ‘ad a couple of lumps of coal for us supper!’
Oh, they don’t know they’re born!
Valerie, I’m glad it made you laugh. Language is a strange thing sometimes!
realdoc, in our house ‘I love you’ can, depending on inflection, mean anything from ‘any chance of a lift?’ to ‘what do you mean “more than I earn in a month”?!’