Like, OMG!
Something very strange happened when I was in sixth grade.
It was sometime between 1983 and 1984, when this strange even occurred – all the girls changed. One day, they were all ‘normal’ then a switch was hit and they started speaking a new language.
Enter the Valley Girl.
The Valley Girl was this strange new language that every sentence seemed to have the word “like” in it, and included phrases such as, “Grody to the max!”, and “Like, oh my god!”.
It drove me crazy. What the heck happened to these girls? It wasn’t a fad, more like a cult. I don’t remember any girls that didn’t speak in this strange tongue. If I heard “gag with me a spoon” one more time I would have wanted to be held back at least a year just to get away from it.
And, how in the world, and I suppose to understand what the heck they were saying? There was no Internet around. We didn’t have an English to Valley Girl dictionary. There was no one that worked at the UN that was a translator. I think all I did was smile and nod when some strange phrase came out of these girls mouths.
Being an 11-year old I didn’t talk too girls that much. (Things haven’t changed nowadays either.) So I didn’t get the full exposure to it.
I think that this was really a cult thing, because when we came back to school the next year the Valley Girl was gone. I think that separating the “cult members” for three months might have unprogrammed them.
The ’80′s had some great things: Rubik’s Cube, Jersey Hair and even Hacky Sack. Seems like most things from that decade have come back to haunt us; fortunately, this isn’t one of them.
If that language every decides to make an appearance again, I think that I’ll have to leave the country and move somewhere where they don’t speak English. Is there a version of this stuff in France?
