Herd

As I get older, I’m increasingly convinced that slang is primarily the province of empty, soulless people in dire need of attention.

How else do you explain the thirty-year-old piece of white trash walking around the 7-11 in Levittown, NY shouting, “What up, family?” – and a slew of other asinine things he’d heard on Yo! MTV Raps back in 1992 – into his cell phone last night?

Please don't ask what I was doing in Levittown.

This “gentleman” needed the people in the store to hear him saying these things, kind of the same way I thought people in my neighborhood cared when I wore my JV football jersey around town. I was sure they said to themselves, “Wow! That kid sure is cool! He’s on JV!” I was crushed when I found out this wasn’t the case, but I adjusted and moved gracefully on to the varsity, where my behavioral problems intensified.

I think the little white Guido kids around here are happy when it gets really cold outside, because it affords them the opportunity to walk out the door of the club at four in the morning and exclaim, “Yo, n---a! It’s muthafuckin’ BRICK out here, yo!”

Or when they walk up to you at the front door, grab your arm and say, “Yo! Dis n---a be muthafuckin’ BROLIC, yo!” That’s really impressive, too.

When you’re white and you were born and raised within the five boroughs of New York City and you don’t speak like this, the world can seem like a very empty and pointless place sometimes.