Sixteen years of teaching 9th-graders has given me the equivalent of a constant studio audience. The current thing that kids say - when you have said something they believe to be apt, if critical or even just descriptive of someone or something else, particularly if you have not requested their input - is, "Sauce!" Which seems to have come from "Sauced!" Which may have come from "Salted!" Which, to give excessive credit, may have come from some poetic idea of putting salt in one's wounds, or on one's slugs.
Examples:
Ms. Gordon: Johnny, you might have forgotten to hand in your homework because I can't find it.
Jimmy: Sauce!
Ms. Gordon: Ok guys - Ms. Jones asked if we could trade computer lab time, but I said no to her for this week because we really have to finish the assignment.
Johnny: Sauce!
Ms Gordon: We have to spend some more time on review, because almost no one got a perfect on the last mini-quiz.
Jimmy/Johnny: Sauce!
It's incredibly annoying. But we have to put up with some annoying things from students. I have put my foot down, weakly, with my own descendants at home. Unfortunately, Akiva and Ezra still say these foolish expressions occasionally (and they happily provided a longer list of same when I told them I was writing this - including "pwned!" which has been obviously borrowed from an ancient intellectual computer communication age).
I was counting on the youngest to continue to use standard English for a while younger - but Gedalya recently exited babyhood and skipped right to adolescence when, while eating spaghetti, his brother got messy and he shouted, "Sauce!"
Maybe this is a Boston-area thing; I haven't heard it from my kids.
ReplyDelete