Do You ya-HOO! 24/7?

Image via CrunchBase

Last week, you asked your daughter if she had a ‘ya-HOO! account.

“Mom, why do you always say ya-HOO!?”  “It’s just, Yahoo.”

“Well, because when I was growing up, I yelled ‘Ya-HOO!  Mountain Dew!’ along with the commercial.”  And along with Wishbone, the cook in the TV show ‘Rawhide.’  During your childhood, you had a steady diet of cowboy westerns:  Bonanza, Branded, Daniel Boone, Death Valley Days, Maverick, Roy Rogers and Wagon Train.  Not one character on those shows would be caught dead just calling, ‘Yahoo!‘  It’s Ya-HOO! or bust.

Things were much simpler when you were younger; you aren’t accustomed to the new mumbo jumbo lingo.  Back then, there weren’t so many communication options.  You had your telephone: rotary, wall or pink princess.  You had your paper, envelope and stamp.  You kept it simple.

Since the rapid-fire advancements in technology, there are now so many inventions that you older folks have the pesky task of trying to keep track of all of the exact names and terminology. It’s challenging to keep up with all of the trends when you have decades of names already stuffed into your brain.   Plus, nowadays there are such flat-out strange terms like Digger, Google, StumbleUpon, Tumblr and Twitter.  Will they soon morph into Dig-Into, Googler, Stumbler, Tumble-Upon and Twit-Upon?

But then, you’re talking to the person who orginally struggled with the ’24/7′ concept.  Why mix hours and days into one digit?

Yes, you and your husband have been known to call the new Amazon reader a “Kiddle.”  You mispronounce consumer products all day long with great abandon–everything from designer water to household inventions.   Back in your day, you had the “Fuller Brush” man.  He called on your house and sold your mother household cleaning brushes.   Today the supermarket sells ‘Swifters,‘ as you call them, much to your children’s glee.  And isn’t ‘Pasani ‘ a nice pure name for designer water?  (Sometimes you think they can’t wait for you to completely mangle the next word; or did you unwittingly create a better brand name?)  No company has contacted you yet, but you are still waiting patiently.  You wish every invention was as easy as to say as,  Apple, iPhone and iPad.

So it’s not just IT; a simple trip to the grocery store can send you into a tailspin.  Yes, you and your husband call BOGO, ‘BONGO.’  Shouldn’t an acronym make some semblance of a real word?  If not, why isn’t it BOGOF?  Who makes these up?  ‘DIY’ threw you into a loop.  Is it a crime to yearn for pronounceable words?  But it’s not just acronyms, it’s new-fangled products as well.

“Have you tried cookin’ that Kin-no-a?” you asked your daughter last week, while shopping at the beach market.

“Oh, do you mean, Keen-wa (quinoa)?  Yes, it’s great.”

“Don’t ya wanna buy some of that Sweet Moon?” you said as you navigated down the next aisle.

“Oh, Mom.  You’re so cute.  Did you mean, Sweet Water, or Blue Moon ale?”

‘Nuff said.  You plumb. give. up.