Goober Peas

Siobhan and I were just reminiscing about that old song “Goober Peas”. And I was realizing, hey, wait a second—what the hell are goober peas?

I had to look it up. Any guesses? It’s peanuts!

Weird. But then I thought on about how what a great insult goober is. I mean, still to this day, you wouldn’t liked to be called a goober would you?

Other old names that are still valid today:

–dude
–aught(new life in 2000!)
–nerd(if anything nerd is more relevant today than ever. But consider how this word is like 25 years old and counting!)
–geek(also, started with different meaning—circus freak who eats the heads off chickens but is still around)
–cool(honestly, how long has the word cool been ‘cool’? at least 60 years. that’s staying power.)

I think I need to hang out with some teenagers to see what sort of words they are using. When I was a kid, I was in Boy Scouts for like 6 months. And I learned how to play Egyptian Ratscrew which is one of the best card games of all time. There are quite a lot of rules of ettiquette in Egyptian Ratscrew. And if you mess one of these up, people tend to chide you.

But being Boy Scouts, these kids tend to be a little more wholesome than your normal kid. And a little more geeky. So instead of saying “bonehead!” or “loser!” or something, they would exclaim, “Greenhorn!”

How lame is that? But there’s something sort of awesome about it too. This reminds me too of the time when I was a lifeguard and I accidentally yelled at some teenagers for “horseplay”. They never let me live that down. There are some words that just make you into a geek or an adult. And the worst is when they do both at that same time.

Total greenhorn move.