I’ve always been fascinated by the origins of catchphrases or “cool” words. Most catchphrases seem to come from TV shows, movies, commercials, or SNL skits, but the “cool” words are harder to pin down. I remember an old "Wayne’s World" skit in which Bruce Willis was playing the coolest kid at Wayne and Garth’s school, and every fall it was his unofficial job to come up with the new popular word for the year. It wouldn’t surprise me if that gag wasn’t far from the truth of how many of these slang terms come to be, especially with the way things evolve now between social networking and Internet shorthand. But sometimes they just happen. I know this because this past weekend while I was at my sister’s house celebrating Mother’s Day with our family, a new catchphrase was born.
I have three nephews. I’d imagine that any house with three boys living in it has a lot of goofy boy energy and nonsense going on, and since I didn’t grow up with any brothers my inner fifteen-year-old can easily get caught up in this. Some examples: For years I threatened to buy Nephew #3 a Barbie doll for either Christmas or his birthday, right up until Nephew #1 suggested that he beat me to the punch and buy me a Christmas Barbie first, which he did. At some birthday we had a cake made with two layers of different sizes. When Nephew #3 got a piece from the bottom layer I told him he had to eat Basement Cake, and he was not amused... but then a couple birthdays down the road my birthday cake was made up of two non-congruent layers, this time with the words “Basement Cake” clearly frosted onto the lower layer. If one of the boys comes up with what they think is a great joke to burn me with, it is always the second thing I'll hear when I walk in through the front door of their house (the first thing being a trio of excited dogs barking).
Nephew #3 is big on any chance he can get to take a shot at someone. He’s a good kid but he's also the youngest, so it’s kind of his responsibility to occasionally irritate the rest of us. His most common target is easily Nephew #2. Sometimes he’ll go after #2 because the music he likes “isn’t any good,” or the video games he plays “are stupid,” or if they aren’t stupid then he "sucks at them," or he plays a stupid instrument in band, or he got a B+ on something instead of an A.... I’m sure you get the idea. They’re both in middle school and only two years apart, so they’re at ages when they can switch from being best friends to mortal enemies between breaths. At this point #2 has fielded so many arguments and insults that he’s more or less immune to them now.
This past weekend while I was at their house to celebrate Mother’s Day with the whole family, #2 and #3 were tapping away at their phones when, for some reason I don’t remember but I’m sure it must have been both valid and critically important, #3 felt compelled to point out that the flashlight app on his phone was better than the one #2 had because of the faster strobe light. This news didn’t even phase #2 -- he either seemed perfectly happy with his flashlight app or he couldn’t care less about the taunt because he didn’t even acknowledge it. But I was amused. I rolled my eyes and pointed out to #3 just how weak of an argument he was making: “Really? You’re so out of things to irritate him about that you’re resorting to this? You’re making fun of his strobe light?” Then I announced that for the rest of our lives whenever #3 made up some weak argument to try and take #2 down a peg, I was going to point out how sad it was by saying to #2, “Oh, dude. You just got strobed.” The translation of this being “Did you notice how feeble your brother’s latest insult was?”
Throughout the rest of the night, the phrase “You got strobed” was used more than once, and not just by me. I think it’s got legs. I would encourage anyone reading this to somehow find a way to work it into conversation tomorrow if the opportunity presents itself. Let’s see if we can get a brand new catchphrase into circulation!
