I am a white, thirty-seven-year-old male. My fellow white

thirty-somethings, the same ones who have badmouthed

hip-hop music for years, have taken to the distressing habit

of imitating urban youth: dawg, beeyatch, spelling boys as

boyz. I have only in recent years become comfortable with

eighties surfer/stoner talk: dude, sweet, major, whoah. I

will not change my vernacular at this age. If I’m going to

sound out-of-it, I’m going to sound out-of-it with a lingo

familiar to me.