He extracted the sturdy “Relic” brand watch, stared at it for a moment, and then murmured, “This is so sick.”

 

I cringed. My wife and I examined dozens and dozens of watches before selecting the one we felt Brad would most appreciate, but we couldn't really know if it would suit him. But for crying out loud, even if he didn't like it he didn't have to be so rude.

 

Brad looked up at me and grinned.

 

“'Sick' means 'good', Dad.”

 

“'Sick' is good?”

 

“This watch is totally sick, and it is exactly what I wanted,” he replied.

 

I mused for a moment.

 

“Just so you know, I tried to get you a watch that was not only sick but violently ill, but your mother said we could only afford one that was slightly nauseous,” I said. I thought things were confusing enough a decade ago, back in the days when my boys thought something was good and they called it “bad” (as in, “that Dodge Viper is so bad!”).

 

I need a translator to understand my own offspring. But this is nothing new. Each generation of young people creates a new language, a series of code words that identify them as a cohort of the cool as opposed to the gang of geezers.

 

In my teenage days, shortly after the War of 1812, if something was good we called it “boss.” This confused my mother, who was a teacher before she became a mom.

“That Corvette is so boss,” I said one day.

 

“Boss? When did that become an adjective?”

 

“Mom, puh-leeze,” I said, secretly thrilled that she was baffled.

 

The worst thing was when my dad tried to speak to my friends using “our” language. Even if he managed (ever so briefly) to use a contemporary slang term in its proper context, it sounded so hokey coming out of his mouth.

 

“When I was your age, we thought it was boss to say, 'Dig me, Daddy, I'm an Idaho spud!'” Dad beamed.

 

We all ran from the house lest we be infected with the dorkification virus.

 

Because I can understand the impulse youngsters feel to have their own terminology, I have never made a fuss about it, and I have never felt the need to fit in. But I have drawn one line in the sand.

 

One day, I spied the following bumper sticker on the back of a vehicle owned by a teenagerly person: “If Its Too Loud, Your Too Old!”

 

There was no way I could let that grammatical nightmare slide.

 

“Listen up, my linguistically challenged little tot. If you are going to insult us older persons, at least have the decency to get your words right. If you are joining the term 'it is' into the contraction 'it's,' then you need an apostrophe between the 't' and the 's.' And that same rule applies to your misuse of the word 'your' which is actually supposed to be 'you're' as in 'you are' too old. Got it?”

 

“Dude, like, I didn't understand a word you just said,” he replied.

 

“That's because we old people have our own little code language, which we refer to as 'English.' You'd better master it if you want a bad job some day.”

 

“Huh?”

 

“And a final word of advice; if you want to write the next great American novel, make sure you don't let your participles dangle,” I advised.

 

He was checking his zipper when I left him.

 

An amazing thing about language is that even with all the twists, turns, fads and generational codes, I am reading the same Bible as the row of teenagers who sit across from me week after week in church. And the timeless Word of God is speaking clearly and powerfully to all of us, whether we are wearing sandals or burgundy wingtip shoes.

 

Is this “sick,” or what?