No Cap

“Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.” – George Orwell

I am a walking Progressive commercial, and I am slowly turning into my parents.

I have inspirational canvases hanging around my home, and I regularly talk about the weather and traffic. I love to eat dinner early, I need readers for restaurant menus, and my bed time is somewhere between 9:30 and 10 p.m. I’m always one sneeze away from peeing my pants, and I pulled a neck muscle getting out of bed last week.

My kids playfully roll their eyes at pretty much everything I say, and as I walk around in my Walgreens joggers (I bought all four pairs from the back wall, next to the travel toiletries), Walmart soft and stretchy T-shirts (I bought every color) and Kurus, which have built in orthotics (score!), I realize the gap in age is growing. But two days ago, my 12-year-old son asked me to buy a can of Busch’s Sweet Heat baked beans for his religion class so his classmates could pet it. Soooo. Yeah.

A few weeks ago, my 15-year-old daughter asked me to play an online fashion show game. The task was to find an outfit from the 20’s in 45 seconds and then walk the catwalk in that outfit. The goal was to place first in the fashion show. The best outfit won. I put on my readers and started scrolling. I couldn’t find any flapper skirts, felt hats or fur coats in the virtual dressing room. When time was up, I looked at her Avatar who was dressed like Avril Lavigne and my person who had nothing on (she came in first and I came in last). I put my phone down and said, “I don’t get it. There’s nothing here from the 1920’s. Is this game broken?”

My teenager replied, with an exaggerated eye roll, “It’s the 2020s mooooom. Not the 1920s.”

Oof.

When my son gets home from school, I ask him how his day is and it’s usually this: “I’m not gonna lie, it was low-key mid. No cap.”

And I’m like, “Cool. That sounds fun, Captain.” America.

And he rolls his eyes and asks the same question he always asks at 4 p.m., “What’s for dinner tonight?”

And I say, “Lasagna.”

And he says, “Bet.”

And I stand there in my Walgreens joggers, pumping my fist in the air and jumping up and down, excited that he is excited about something I’m cooking and then immediately run to the bathroom, so I don’t pee my pants.

I mean I know what “low-key,” “mid,” “no cap” and “bet mean.” I’m like cool like that. Cool like that. Cool like that. Cool like that.

(Can I get a high-five for Digable Planets “Rebirth of Slick” (Cool Like Dat) that came out in 1992 – which is 32 YEARS AGO????)

I know I’m older and not cool. I don’t think I ever was. I was 40 when I was 20, but now that I’m actually closer to 50, I’m starting to realize that things are changing and I don’t really understand all of it.  And I’m OK with that.

Mostly.

I draw the line at punctuation. It might be the hill I die on.

That’s the generational predicament I found myself in a couple of weeks ago when my daughter explained to me that when I text I need to stop using a period at the end of my sentences because when I do, my texts read like I’m angry.

Uhhhhh. What the skibbidi?

I replied, “I’m sorry. Punctuation is out? Complete sentences are a no no? When? Why? You know I write for a living, right?”

“I always think you’re angry at me when you use a period at the end of short sentences.”

I stood there with my jaw opened, speechless. “Teach. Me. Grasshopper,” I slowly said. “Please.”

She pulled up our text conversation and started with the one from the day earlier.

“OK. Like this one,” she said, reading my text, “I’M HERE.” She kind of yelled it and stood really tall, shoulders back, lips glued together. She reminded me of Miss Trunchbull from Matilda.

I stood there even more confused than usual. “Yeah, I was there. At school. Like in the parking lot. So ‘I’m here.’ Like here, to pick you up,” I said, in a condescending, why don’t you get me voice, arms waving in frustration.

“That’s not how it reads,” she said. “I thought you were mad at me.”

“So, if I had left the period off of that sentence, you wouldn’t have thought I was mad at you?

“Yeah.”

“That’s a lot of power for one little punctuation mark,” I mumbled under my breath.

“I heard that, mom!”

“Sorry. What about exclamation points?”

“They’re fine.”

“Ellipses?”

“Sure.”

“What about just saying OK?”

“No, that’s rude. KK is better,” she said, with a smile and a bounce. “You know like KK!”

“Uh OK… Oops I mean KK,” I said. “What about emojis?”

“Yup. They’re good.”

I know enough about language to know that it evolves but I really didn’t know that a tiny little dot at the end of a sentence could cause so much drama. I decided to research this theory even further. During a training last Saturday for the nonprofit I work part-time for, I asked one of the participants who was a 20-something pre-med LSU student. I fully expected her to be Team Me.

I had a lot to learn. She immediately was Team Teen.

“Oh yeah, you can’t do that. It’s so rude when people use a period when texting. Your daughter is right, Ms. April.”

I don’t know if it was the ‘Ms. April’ or the fact that she supported my daughter’s wonky theory or that a perimenopausal hot flash crept up my body at that moment, but I felt super old. Like really, really old.

And then I remembered 15-year-old me. I rolled my eyes at everything my parents said. I was embarrassed that they existed.

AND.

I went to school dressed in a Hypercolor T-shirt shirt that changed color when I got sweaty, tucked into a pair of my father’s Fruit of the Loom boxer shorts and, on my feet, I wore penny loafers complete with a penny inserted into the tongue of each loafer. So maybe, just maybe this generation isn’t too different from my generation when I was the same age as their generation.

No cap.

November 14, 2024