Cap Fire Drip

Language research took a significant amount of my time as I was writing However Long the Day. The characters of the novel speak with a number of English dialects. In addition, the novel takes place in 1918, which had its own set of definitions, slang words, idioms, and speech patterns. A whole post could be written about this process, but that is not my purpose here.

Slang now fascinates me. 

My research into 1918 slang (American, English, Irish, African American, regionalisms in New York City), of which I only scratched the surface, forced me to consider my own turns of phrase and manners of speech. I grew up in the generation that made ubiquitized awesome and dude, to say nothing of fillers like like. 

I had three teenagers and a pre-teen when I wrote However Long the Day. I used to be annoyed with today’s teenage jargon, but the act of researching a bygone era taught me to be less linguistically judgy and roll with most of it.

That’s not to say I don’t have language pet peeves. I suppress a groan every time I hear someone say literally when they mean figuratively. I roll my eyes when someone uses the word irregardless. I’m only human.

Even so, mutability is what makes language so fun. We learn to speak in the forgiving, pliable world before grade school, but linguistic flexibility is beaten out of us in turns by ever stricter grammarians. Some good comes from this educational process. Rules help us communicate with a far wider range of people than might otherwise be possible. Yet once we know the rules—once we can speak and write and be understood—can’t we take some joy in breaking those rules?

Back to slang.

One of my favorite pastimes is incorrectly using my kids’ slang. I love stringing a few words together to form complete adolescent nonsense (nonsense from their perspective, as well as mine) and watching their reactions. Responses range from disgust to irritation to amusement to elation. 

If you want to try this humorous activity, a few items to note.

First, never use teenage slang in a serious way, meaning, never use it in a conversation with your children and their friends as though you’re one of them. Doing so is a recipe for disaster. You will get it wrong. And even if you get it right, you will still get it wrong. If you’re really talented, you might be able to intentionally annoy your teenagers this way, but such sly usage is graduate-level stuff. Best to avoid until you’ve mastered the lower levels.

Next, maintain a healthy distance between you and the edge. What edge? The cliff that separates endearing intergenerational teasing from a full-on teenage angst explosion. The rapidity at which the soil in this territory sloughs into an abyss is startling, so be cautious.

Third, aging and out-of-fashion lingo will elicit a strong reaction. There seems to be a relevance curve at play here. Anything between a year and five years old will get the starkest response, and then the heat tapers off as you roll back the decades. They will eventually look at you in confusion as you string together your own childhood slang.

Last, the more you can incorporate other media (emoji, memes, etc) the better. It seems to add to the cringeworthiness (there I go using a Gen Zism).

Which brings me to cap fire drip. I’m partial to other phrases (yeet bussin’, bougie flex, basic gucci), but cap fire drip ticks all the boxes. It’s easy to send via emoji. It’s simple. It can be rearranged to meet the needs of the moment (Had a bad day? That’s drip fire cap; Won your lacrosse game? Totally fire cap drip; you get the idea). And it almost sounds like real slang, but will confuse/amuse your teenagers and their friends.

Now you know the game, so play it to your heart’s content. It may take some time to find the idiomatic sweet spot, but you and your teens will enjoy hours of free amusement when you do. There’s nothing sweeter than seeing your fifteen year old roll her eyes and smile for the fifth time that evening. Or your fourteen year old’s baffled expression as you mangle several phrases. Of the horrified sighs of, “Dad!” from your oldest. Or the wild laughter of your youngest.

May cap fire drip serve you well, and the odds be ever in your favor.