488 Rules for Life: The Thankless Art of Being Correct. Kitty Flanagan
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treats and pretends they’ve eaten them all and that they have nothing left. They may even actively encourage the other siblings to consume all their treats. When they have nothing left, the trickster then brings out all their goodies and takes great delight in eating them slowly in front of the others.
The act of hoarding and hiding with the sole aim of lording it over others later is called poncewobbling. And there’s always one poncewobbler (noun) in every family. I’m ashamed to say that in my family it was me. Poncewobbling can have an unfortunate and often unforeseen consequence, and that is when the parent steps in and makes the poncewobbler share their remaining treats with the siblings who have nothing left. Poncewobbling—be careful kids, it’s a risky business.
A word about the generation gap
Youth-speak is an area of language that changes faster than any other, therefore it’s difficult to make definitive rules about particular words you should or shouldn’t use. That’s because while youths are great inventers of words and phrases, they also dump those words as fast as they invent them. A basic rule of thumb for anyone over forty who wants to avoid looking out of touch is to listen closely to the vernacular of teenagers and then never use any of the words you just heard. Let the youth enjoy their own language, you have lots of other things, like financial stability and Facebook. (Which, of course, you totally stole from the youth because they were forced to drop it once all the parents and unhappy middle-aged married people discovered it and started using it to track down their high school sweethearts.) Act your age and maintain your dignity by sticking with language from your own era. As embarrassing as it may be to refer to something as ‘bitchin’ or ‘bodacious’, at least you just sound old, as opposed to old and try-hard.
Lit. For the record, I don’t know what it means. From the context in which I have heard it used, I gather it is something positive. But that’s as much as I can tell you. And again, it’s not my business to know. I’m well over forty.
* Editor’s note: The word ‘lit’ was recently spotted in a well-known fried chicken chain billboard so it’s safe to say ‘lit’ is now obsolete.
Dropped. Pertaining to music, such as a single or an album. If you grew up in a time when big black circles called records were released and shiny silver things called CDs came out , then you are too old to start telling me that someone’s new album is ‘dropping’. You should also never refer to ‘dropping a beat’. Ever.
Banging. You can’t erase your middle-agedness simply by listening to young people’s radio stations. Sure, you can tune in as a way of staying across current musical trends, but avoid repeating any of the language you hear spoken by the presenters such as ‘Wow, this shit is on fire’ and ‘That song is banging!’ Youth presenters, however, always drop their g’s so it would actually be pronounced bangin’, not that it matters because you won’t be saying it.
Nanginator.
This is the name given to the equipment used to ‘do a nang’. Or at least it was for a few days in June 2019. Even though the kids will probably have moved on from doing nangs by the time
That said, the youth do not get a free pass on language just because they are young and inventive. There are still some rules and even some words I’d suggest they cut from their lexicon altogether, as you will see in the following section.
KIDS TODAY
87
Curb your use of the word ‘like’
Like is many things; however, it is not an adverb and should not be used as such:
And so I was, like, I cannot believe you are not going to, like, eat the dessert I made. And she was, like, but it’s banoffee pie, which is, like, disgusting. It’s, like, not even pie, it’s banana-flavoured mucus on, like, a cheesecake base. And I was, like, whatever.
As you can tell from the above, I don’t particularly like banoffee pie.
88
Assume that people know what you mean
Unless you are explaining the solution to a quadratic equation, or you happen to speak in riddles worthy of a cryptic crossword, then it’s safe to assume that most people will be able to follow what you’re saying. So there’s really no need to keep checking in and saying ‘know what I mean?’ every couple of sentences.
89
Don’t use words you don’t need, like ‘literally’
Most of us don’t speak in metaphor and simile, we almost always speak literally, so there is rarely the need to qualify your sentence by adding the word ‘literally’. As in ‘Oh my god, she ate the whole piece of cake, like, literally the whole piece of cake.’
It would be highly unusual for someone to assume that ‘piece of cake’ meant something else in this instance so you can do away with the word ‘literally’.
However, if you were talking about your dog and how he chewed up one of your board games, then in that instance you might want to qualify your statement with a ‘literally’: ‘We were playing Yahtzee the other day and then Bongo came along and ate the whole box and dice, literally the whole box and dice.’
CONVERSATION
Conversation is the mainstay of any social event, be it a date, a dinner party or a work function. It’s something we get to practise all the time, yet very few of us are any good at it and I include myself here. I can talk for an hour and a half on stage at people no problem, but it’s very different in social situations.
I get particularly nervous at parties. I have a real knack of grinding the conversation down into a series of dull questions that the other person has no interest in answering. I’ve noticed I also ask ‘closed questions’ a lot of the time, questions that require a short one or two-word answer and never lead to a broader discussion. I know for a fact that I am often ‘that person’, the one you get trapped talking to and have to invent an excuse to get away from. My saving grace is that I’m aware of my shortcomings and when I sense I am dragging someone into one of my conversation death spirals, I will try to help them get away. I will be the one who suggests they move on, saying something like, ‘Look, I won’t keep you, please go and get yourself a drink’, while magnanimously gesturing at the bar with an extended arm, thereby showing them the exit route.
A truly good conversationalist has an uncanny knack of making the person they are talking to feel interesting. It’s an amazing skill—usually you don’t even realise you’re in the presence of a good conversationalist, you just start thinking, Gee I’m telling some good stories today. Good conversationalists are few and far between, which is a shame because they make social occasions an absolute joy.
Obviously, as a person completely lacking in conversation skills, I needed to consult some experts