A few weeks ago I was talking to my daughter Jan about slang, in particular, slang terms meaning really good. We mentioned “bad” and “phat,” and Jan said that she had recently heard the word “clutch” as a positive slang term, probably because of the positive athletic connotation of doing something heroic in the “clutch.” “Clutch” was a new one for me. I used to be up on slang back when I was teaching. I was right there with the teens telling people that something was “my bad” or telling someone “to talk to the hand” or sarcastically saying “no, duh!” when confronted by the obvious.
Anyway, my conversation with Jan got me thinking about the need for senior citizens to have their own slang. We need some good, new slang terms, and not just those from our youth like “groovy” and “tough” and “rad” and “in your ear!” So I would like to suggest the immediate adoption of the word “crutch” to describe something that is really good in senior lingo. Imagine a sentence like, “Man, did you read about that new long-term care insurance? That plan is really crutch!” Or. . .”Whoa, she is so tough! Her bod is still as crutch as it was in high school.”
About a year ago, I tried to initiate another term. It was “kug” to describe a combination “kiss” and “hug,” the doing of which is a huge part of our culture. I thought it was a great idea. It was economical, too, in that you got to use one word in the place of three. And it sounded good! Like in, “I hadn’t seen her in years, and when I saw her at the party, I went over and “kugged” her on the spot.” Kug was an abysmal failure. Lee Finkle and I were the only ones to ever use it. And we only said it once or twice at Lions Club. . .which is kind of embarrassing.
For “crutch” to catch on, those senior cit’s reading this have got to start peppering their conversations with the new c-word! You have to “like” this posting and share it with your crutchest, old friends. Share it with your crutchest young ones, too. And maybe, just maybe, it’ll get picked up and jump from here to there, from person to person, and we will have what you call “a movement,” just like Arlo Guthrie was hoping for at the end of “Alice’s Restaurant,” a reference aimed directly at the “Crutchest Generation.”
P.S. I have no idea what the "Crutch" picture on top is in reference to. I just liked it.
