'Sup Dawg?

Are you cool? Is it cool to even say cool anymore? I looked up the word cool in the thesaurus and found that all of the synonyms are equally antiquated words such as dandy, divine, glorious, groovy, hunky-dory, keen, marvelous, neat, nifty, sensational and swell. When I use words like these to describe anything, and especially myself, my children roll their eyes and shake their heads.

It appears I am not "down" with the lingo that is popular today. See, right there I go again. Nobody uses the word lingo anymore. And would it be more proper and yet totally un-cool to say I am not "up" on the popular slang vernacular. In today's modern culture are we "up" on things or "down" with things? I can never get it right.

Sometimes I try to be hip and happening (I'm sure nobody is using those words anymore either) when I deal with my teens. During a conversation with my first-born male child I once decided to take the "because I said so" down to his loud music, indiscernible lyric level. He asked why I always made him take out the garbage and I told him, "Cuz that's how I roll…..Homie."

Now I fully admit that adding Homie to the end was a little much. I could tell this because my son stared at me for several seconds. On his face I could see the indecision. Should he laugh off the fact that I used a funny phrase like "that's how I roll" or should he crawl into a hole, never to return, because I'd tacked on the completely out of date word Homie to the end?

He finally just said, "I see. That's how you roll. That's great." And he took out the trash.

On other occasions I throw myself into full rapper mode in an effort to make my kids laugh. My 10-year old son, Christian, who likely fancies himself somewhat of a "cool dude" (I know…out of date phrase) will usually giggle and join in with my "Yo yo yo, Homedog! 'Sup?" He will answer me back in some rapper fashion complete with appropriate arm and head movements.

Surprisingly, or not, none of my wee ones find me amusing in public places when I slip into my rapper persona. Yelling across the water park, "Yo brotha! That trip down the pink slide was tight!"

The most dangerous place for one of my offspring to be is in the car with me. For our almost 15-year old daughter it is a double-edged sword. She wants to control the radio and changes songs every 15 seconds, often landing on popular hip-hop tunes. Now, as we all know, despite often inappropriate and sometimes downright vulgar lyrics (she immediately changes those songs!) these tunes have a great beat. They would definitely get a 10 on American Bandstand because "you could really dance to it".

Now you throw together a song with a great beat and a mother who has lost the vast majority of her mind and you've got some serious car-seat grooving going on. This never sits well with the eldest daughter. Even when her most favorite song is on the radio she will change the station if I start to dance in my seat. Only seldom do I ever sit still while she is lulled into a false sense of security and then commence to groovin' when we get beside another vehicle.

A song that is currently stuck in my head, due to a recent car trip with said daughter, says something about trying to catch the singer riding dirty. I don't even know what that means. The last person I saw riding dirty was my 6-year old after he'd splashed through the muddy sprinkler run-off in the gutter. But no matter that I don't know what I'm singing about. I find myself scrubbing the bathtub while singing, "trying to catch me riding dirty…"

My neighbor confirms that these same events are taking place in her home as well. She is, herself, an accomplished car-seat dancer. She delights in embarrassing her children as well and one day her youngest son politely said, "Um mom…I'm not trying to be mean, but you aren't a very good dancer." To which she replied, "Oh yes I am! I'm about to break a move!" He reminded her that the proper phrase was "bust a move" and then stared out the window.

Once you reach a certain age, it's hard to tell if you are cool…or hip…or tight. All I can do is try to keep up as best I'm able. I can still do the Running Man dance move and I know a lot of the words to the Vanilla Ice song "Ice, Ice Baby" for whatever that is worth. Who cares if I get mixed up and say, "Get down with your bad self!" now and then? I guess I'm just my own unique brand of cool.

Peace out. Word to your mother.