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Sunday, April 19, 2015

LOL



I’ve been daringly writing LOL a fair bit in my comments on Facebook posts and on blog post comments lately and I must admit I feel a bit intrepid, daring, plucky when I do it.

It’s like the same adventurously youthful feeling I’d have walking into an eighteenth birthday party wearing a leopard skin mini skirt, stilettos and bopping along to Lego House by Eddie Redmayne. 




But sometimes I feel self-conscious writing LOL, as if I’m pretending to be someone I’m not, you know... being a middle-aged try-hard.

But now that I have finally embraced the whole LOL thing, it must surely be out of fashion… or at the very least not trendy… or just plain ‘gay’… or ‘lame’ or… ‘sucks’ or whatever they say now.

I always catch on to things five years after the fact.

It’s the same thing with awesome. Does anyone say that anymore or has it been relegated to the over 50s.

Is it now phat? or sick? or sweet?... and not totally awesome anymore?

I just don’t know.

I’d hate my teenage daughter, Lulu, to be walking out the door all dressed up on her way to the disco (or whatever they’re called now) and me say, 


“Have a great night darling, you look really FAT!” and be saying the wrong thing. How do you differentiate Phat from Fat in oral language? Is it in fact, okay to say oral anymore?

Or to be greeting my colleague who’s just lost 10 kilograms over the school holidays after a punishing regime of boot camp and strict adherence to the Paleo diet and say, “OH.MY GOD! YOU. LOOK. SICK. MOFO!”

I only recently found out what MOFO stands for. Previously I thought it was the equivalent to ‘cool dude’.

YOLO? I thought it meant goodbye… like hooroo (North Queensland for goodbye).

I wondered why people would look at me with concerned faces as I pulled out of their driveway, tooting the horn and cheerily shouting, "YOLO MOFOS!" at the top of my voice.
Texting is something else I just can’t get the hang of, particularly when communicating with my kids. I’m starting to think we adults are missing the secret messages hidden in the brevity of such texts. 

It’s a bit like the Da Vinci Code. Teenagers have invented a more succinct, efficient method of communication.

Lulu went to Melbourne this weekend and I asked her to text me a few times a day so I’d know she was still alive. It grants me ten minutes peace of mind each time I hear from her.

These are the only messages I have received thus far:

Thursday 19:36 (as she’s boarding plane): K

Thursday 23:23: Here

Friday 13:09: Alive

Friday 21:35: K

Saturday 11:30: Indeedy!

Sunday 10:14: Pick me up at 6:10

Sunday 10:14: Pick me up at 6

Sunday 10:14: Maybe 6:15

Sunday 11:06: Shit wait it’s 7 it lands

Sunday 14:38: Mum???

Sunday 15:13: Flt delayed now 8:00
I’ve analysed these texts and these are my interpretations.
Clearly I needed to transcribe these enigmatic puzzle-like texts by applying the Fibonacci integer sequence and see what I could decode.

Notice how at first I only received short abrupt, some might even say, bad-mannered messages.

By Saturday (the third day) Lulu used a three syllable word incorporating a small measure of enthusiasm (!). This clearly points to the fact she was beginning to miss me.

By Sunday you can see just how much the fruit of my loins is missing me (perhaps subliminally) because she has sent me no less than SIX WHOLE TEXTS!

Maybe I should send a mysterious text back for her to decipher...

Something like, Catch a taxi darling. LOL.