When I was a little kid, I used the word “like” in nearly every sentence I spoke. Sometimes I’d use it multiple times per sentence. Everyone my age did. We were children, and our ability to annoy was as abundant as Weird Al Yankovic cassette tapes at car washes.
We talked like imbeciles, cramming and forcing the word “like” into every sentence that touched our lips. A piece of information that should have only taken three seconds to say often took 30 seconds or longer, depending on the number of “likes” we added. The English language was our bitch, and we beat it unmercifully, taking great pride in the fact that talking to us was like talking to a pack of mildly retarded people.
As I grew older, I replaced the word “like” with “um”. This was a more mature – and much more Minnesotan – way of intentionally stuttering. Often, the word “um” would be stretched out until it became an entire sentence by itself. Armed with even more ways to lengthen the time it took others to understand me, the word “um” and I became inseparable for years.
In college, I became a true adult and replaced the words “um”, “like”, and “y’know” with various unwarranted curse words. Instead of saying “Ummm, I dunno. I just, y’know, saw a movie and stuff.”, I’d say “Fuckin’, I dunno. I just, fuckin’, saw a movie and shit.” It was both enjoyable and unintentionally hilarious.
As much as I love gratuitous profanity, that phase only lasted through a few years of college. I did away with it after taking a speech course wherein the professor taught me to strengthen my oratory skills by getting rid of extra words. Unnecessary words such as “um” or “like” were a lesser person’s way of speaking, they said, a red flag to identify poor people and cowards.
Winners and champions wouldn’t say “I’m looking for, like y’know, a good job.” They’d shorten the sentence and make it more powerful, flashing a big smile as confidence oozed out of even their most secret orifices. In a few months I had broken my bad speaking habits, and through it, become a much sexier man.
But bad habits have a way of sneaking up on you again when you least expect it. They linger, remaining dormant until you let your guard down. The next thing you know, there’s a cigarette in your hand again, or a pile of candy bar wrappers at your side, or a “like” coming out of your mouth.
Ever since I moved to California, the word “like” has slowly crept back into my vocabulary. This “valley girl” way of speaking isn’t just a phase of adolescence here, it’s the way everyone actually talks. If a sentence being spoken has 12 words, you can almost be guaranteed that four of them are the word “like”.
This is one reason why everyone outside California thinks people here are morons. Other reasons include unchecked illegal immigration, annual record-breaking budget deficits, and the fact that people here are morons. But I digress.
It’s human nature that if you hang around people long enough, you begin talking like them. That’s why college kids talk like their housemates, white rappers talk like black rappers, and why I’m now finding myself using the word “like” again.
The scary part is I don’t even realize when I’m doing it. The sing-songy, airheaded valley girl/surfer dude dialect is catchy like a virus. To combat it, I need to replace the word “like” with other things. Like a smoker trying to break the habit of having a cigarette in their hand, I’m going to break my “like” habit by doing other things with my mouth.
For instance, next week I plan to spit on the ground every time I’m tempted to say the word “like”. Two or three times per sentence, I’ll just stop and hock a big loogie. This will either cause me to recognize when I’m saying “like” and reprogram my speaking style, or it will cause all my friends to stop talking to me, dismissing me from the need to speak in the first place.
If none of that works, I’ll ask my friends to punch me in the mouth every time I say “like”. It may seem extreme, but if I learned one thing from being raised by a father who was once in the Marines, it’s that the threat of beatings – even if no beatings have or will ever occur – works wonders for motivating people.
Regardless, something must be done. I don’t want people to think I’m dumb because of the way I talk. I want them to think I’m dumb because they’ve hung out with me for years and they know I’m dumb. That’s the way you found out, reader, and it worked just fine for us.
The city streets lay barren and deserted. All of society’s basic components continue to function like clockwork, but there’s no people to use them. The white people have gone missing.