Maybe I'm Just Too Old?

I recently left the Oscar-nominated film “Juno” feeling giddy and uplifted, but also a little old and out of the loop when it came to the language used in the witty teen pregnancy flick.

“I am for shizz up the spout,” 16-year-old Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) announces at the start of the movie.

Later, Juno’s dad says he doesn’t approve of her dating while pregnant.

“That’s kind of skanky. Isn’t that what you girls call it these days? Skanky? Skeezy, you know, tore up from the floor up.”

Which got me to thinking – what are the girls and boys saying these days anyway?

So I signed on to Facebook – I am somewhat in the loop – and enlisted insight from the ‘younger than 21’ peeps on my friends list.

I expected to find a few more silly and harmless references – but what I stumbled upon was infinitely more disturbing.

Apparently the word “rape” is being thrown around loosely as part of the daily vocabulary.

“If you rape something, like a test, that means you killed it, or did a good job. But if something rapes YOU, it’s obviously not good,” my husband’s teenage cousin tells me from her Chicago suburb.

“That saying can be applied to pretty much anything that you have done well.”

Any hopes of this new trend being confined south of the border were quickly disolved when my brother and his college-age friends all confirmed that using “raping” in a positive sense is just as widespread here.

And that’s not the extent of it.

Calling your friends “sluts,” “whores” and “skanks” is seen as a compliment.

Is it just me or is something seriously wrong when “hey slutface” is the new term of endearment?

Anything cool is “sick” and on the flip side, something considered stupid or dumb is labelled “gay” or “retarded.”

Wow, managing to denigrade people with disabilities, gays and victims of abuse - all in a day’s work!

Thankfully there are a few uplifting references still in circulation. “Sweet” – if something is really cool and “very nice!” (with a Borat accent ) can be heard making their way around cool kids’ circles.

But it’s clear negative adjectives trump.

At the risk of sounding like a GOW (Grumpy Old Woman), I miss the days when “gnarly,” “awesome” or “radical” were the trusted slang.

And at the further risk of turning into my mother, maybe a good old fashioned lecture is just what kids these days need.

So here goes.

Of all the words in the English language, why, (insert rising voice here) must you use “raped” to describe your success?

Spend a few minutes with rape victims and I’m pretty sure they won’t see anything victorious about their experiences.

What’s wrong with “scored” or “aced” or even kicking it old school with “knocked it out the of the park?”

Next time you call something “retared” or “gay” to express stupidity, think about the kind of message you are sending.

How would you feel if your brother or sister had a disability and all you ever heard was the term used as a negative connotation?

What about the kid who sits beside you in class who is too afraid to admit his true sexuality because all he ever hears is “gay” being used to put something down?

Dig a little deeper dudes! I’m sure you can use your creativity – or at least an online thesaurus – to come up with some more positive and less hurtful ways to express yourself.