THE FIRST WORD; OPINION.

Byline: Ceri Gould

MEAN, you know, he's just Classic year nine.

"I "Old T-shirt and a Timberland top, I mean how is that ever going to work? "'He is just not trendy." I have no idea what this young man, with barely-there bristles is talking about.

His mate chirps up, "What is he going to wear in the rain?" The two clamber past me, bashing the train seat with their oversized backpacks and their ill-disguised excitement.

There is a reason they are incomprehensible to me as they are off to the Reading Festival and I am off to work.

Even my description of their destination underlines the gap between us - is it The Reading Festival? Is it cool to use the definitive article? Should I just say, "I'm off to Reading?" Is cool even cool? I could describe it as "sick" but I fear that too would show me up as a verbal dad-dancer.

When you're young you don't realise how much of the vocabulary you use is created by your contemporaries to create a sense of belonging, of being a gang.

It is also a way of alienating the grown-ups, or Oldies or The Olds.

Watching Educating Cardiff this week, the reality TV show focusing on life and students and teachers at Willows High, this studentspeak was startling.

To me it was a revelation that if something is unusually good or bad then the required adjective is "pure".

This wasn't just Cardiff speak either, which is forever summed up for me by the brilliant chap who told his friend, "You stay heres, while I goes and gets us some fags."

This is vocabulary apartheid between student and teacher, young and old.

When I was of knee-high socks age then we would describe things as fab or naff; boys were either stonking or minging.

There was a rather embarrassing time when someone could be described as "cool as ten bears", but to be honest that never sounded quite right even then.

It was a bit too self-conscious; about as cringeworthy as someone called Darren describing themselves as Daz.

Seven-Year-Old has recently discovered Soz and Lol.

He peppers his conversations with them like a puppy marking his territory.

He loves it when Husb deliberately misuses them, glorying in the power this new vocabulary gives him.

He's also toying with the notion of sarcasm and uses it to uneasy effect by saying rude things and then countering my raised eyebrows with the protestation, "I was being sarcastic."

He's about to start a new school, which will inevitably come with its own hierarchy of cool and uncool things to say and shoulder-shrugs to imitate.

My hope is that it's a school which isn't too cool.

I hope it's one that encourages undisguised enthusiasm and fosters passions and inspires you to be the best you can be.

As the studious, clever Jessica from Educating Cardiff explained, "There's this whole circle of life that I just don't understand."

Fitting in can feel like the be-all and end-all of school days.

No-one wants to stand out of the crowd too much.

I've realised too that this starts way earlier than you'd expect, or wish for.

Six-Year-Old was eulogising this week about her new swimming goggles which Husb had bought.

When I pointed out they were remarkably similar to her other ones, she confided, "Yes, but Mammy, they're Peppa Pig ones and everyone says they're babyish.

"They say, 'Ooh, do you like Peppa Pig?' And I say, 'No, of course I don't. It's babyish. It's just what's on the goggles.'" She then moved closer and confided, "I do actually still like Peppa Pig."

"So do I," I told her, "And I'm not babyish." "That's right," she agreed. "You're really old."

What she should have said, of course, is that I'm "pure old".

@[email protected]

Article Details

Printer friendly Cite/link Email Feedback
Title Annotation:	Features
Publication:	Western Mail (Cardiff, Wales)
Date:	Aug 29, 2015
Words:	640
Previous Article:	BRAINTEASERS.
Next Article:	The six times Wales gave Celebrity Big Brother the best housemates; CBB.