Man Officially Out of Slang Loop

Dubuque, IA – Gerard Bryant (38) recently accepted defeat at the hands of the rising tide of popular idioms and slang expressions which he has not been able to keep up on.  The concession came Monday night at 7:37 pm MDT when he asked his daughter Samantha (11) to pass him a roll at dinner.  Her response of, “Fo’ shizzle, my dizzle,” produced a brief, stunned silence followed by Bryant’s flustered response of, “Fuck it, I quit.”

“I thought I was in the clear when I figured out ‘phat’ was the same as ‘bad’ used to be,” Bryant expounded further to his shocked family.  “But those aren’t even words!  How am I supposed to deal with that?  What the hell is a ‘shizzle?’”

Bryant has been on shaky ground in the race to keep afoot with popular colloquialisms since he graduated from the University of Chicago in 1989.  “I knew I was in trouble when ‘da bomb’ and ‘no diggity’ came out,” he continued.  “That was when I realized that these expressions were just making less and less sense.”  In the past, Bryant had also expressed difficulties understanding phrases and terms such as, “up in my grill,” “bling-bling,” and “hella,” but, until Thursday, he had always expressed optimism for future understanding. 

Recently, Bryant’s hopes had been buoyed by the heightened popularity of 70’s and 80’s fashion styles, but the crossover appeal of the decades’ respective slang expressions has proved minimal. 

“I guess I’m just too old school for my own good,” Bryant said, head in his hands, after a long pause.

Bryant’s wife Julia later expressed relief at her husband’s abandoned crusade.  “I know Gerry likes to try to stay up on things and keep pace with Sammie here,” Julia said in an after-dinner interview session over ice cream sundaes with herself and her daughter.  “But there comes a point when a man just has to act his age.  Do you understand how embarrassing it can be to have a 38 year old man ask for ‘more ketchup, G’ at Bennigan’s?  Even if he was black, it would still be totally inappropriate.”

When asked for her appraisal of the situation, daughter Samantha courageously said what all others had been too shy to admit.  “Daddy just totally dropped an f-bomb!  That’s off the heezy, yo!”

For now, Bryant plans to revert to using only standardized dialect in his conversations.  “I guess it’s time to get back to the good old King’s English,” he said perseverating in what was likely an unhealthy manner on the subject after dinner.  Analysts, however, are not completely convinced and have some expectations for a reversion to the use of slang words like, “radical,” “keen,” and “boss,” with which Bryant is more comfortable.