When I was a teenager, I remember watching TV at Dean Cartmill\u2019s house. Dean was my best friend and one of the most even-tempered people around. Nothing seemed to make him angry. But on that particular occasion, Dean\u2019s dad sauntered into the TV room and greeted us with \u201cHi, girls.\u201d I didn\u2019t think much of it. I figured he was just being funny.<\/p>\n
But as soon as his dad left the room, Dean went into a volcanic rant. \u201cI swear if he does that again, I\u2019m moving out!\u201d Dean bellowed. \u201cI hate it when he calls me a girl!\u201d<\/p>\n
I would try to joke him out of it. \u201cWhere would you move?\u201d I\u2019d ask. \u201cThe YWCA?\u201d It only made him madder.<\/p>\n
I thought about Dean the other day when I ran across an old newspaper clipping I\u2019d been saving. It was from five years ago. Maybe you recall the story. It was about the mayor of a small California town called Arvin. The town\u2019s mayor, a Juan Olivares, was planning to file a complaint against a county sheriff deputy for what the officer kept calling him during a traffic stop. \u201cHe was calling me dude \u2013 and laughing about it,\u201d Mayor Olivares said. The mayor was plenty steamed.<\/p>\n
At the time, the hizzoner didn\u2019t dispute the charges against him for having illegally tinted windows and an open container of beer in the car. He was just ticked off about the \u201cdude\u201d reference. He said he asked the officer five times, \u201cPlease, officer, don\u2019t call me dude. I\u2019m 41 years old and I consider myself a gentleman.\u201d<\/p>\n
A year later, Olivares was voted out as mayor, and I don\u2019t know how his complaint against the officer turned out. But Olivares was probably fighting a lonely battle, because, like it or not, \u201cdude\u201d has become the modern-day language\u2019s \u201cman.\u201d Welcome or not, the word \u201cdude\u201d is here to stay.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m old enough to remember when \u201cdaddio\u201d was just about the hippest replacement for \u201cman\u201d around. A friend and I still call each other daddio these days, believing that the word is now so out of style that it\u2019s actually hip again.<\/p>\n
Personally, I\u2019ve always somewhat favored \u201cguy\u201d because \u201cHi, guy\u201d is such a satisfying little rhyme \u2013 and more compact than \u201cHello, fellow.\u201d Not long ago, I heard a restaurant waiter greet a customer with \u201cFood, dude?\u201d When the customer appeared to be offended, he followed up with \u201cRude, dude?\u201d<\/p>\n
In the olden days (any time before the Clinton administration), calling someone \u201cdude\u201d was a bit of an insult. A dude was sort of a sissified name for an affected male, like the kind that hung out at dude ranches and got saddle sores. It would have been better to call someone baby cakes, pudding, tootipop, butterduck, puggy-bear, sugar-bugar, little fruit fly or scoogy-oogums. Anything but \u201cdude.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the great old movie western, \u201cThe Man That Shot Liberty Valance,\u201d Lee Marvin (Liberty Valance) continually taunts the good guy, Jimmy Stewart. You guessed it \u2013 he keeps calling him \u201cdude.\u201d As it turns out, John Wayne (nicknamed Duke in real life) winds up shooting Liberty Valance. So if they retitled the film for a modern audience, it\u2019d be \u201cThe Duke That Shot a Dude Who Called Another Dude \u2018Dude.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Nowadays, especially among the under-35 crowd, not only do guys call other guys \u201cdude\u201d—but they also call females \u201cdude.\u201d For that matter, females not only call males \u201cdude\u2019, but other females too. Gender makes no difference, dude.<\/p>\n
The growing universality of \u201cdude\u201d \u2013 not only as the name for a chum or a buddy, but the generic name for everyone \u2013 is gaining enormous momentum. It\u2019s disconcerting, but inevitable, that the day may be near when someone will bow to Queen Elizabeth and greet her with, \u201cHey, dude, nice crown!\u201d<\/p>\n
When that apocalyptic day finally arrives, somebody might just as well rewrite all the history books, all the famous literature, all the celebrated quotations and be done with it:<\/p>\n
\u201cNo dude is an island.\u201d John Donne<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are the times that try dudes\u2019 souls.\u201d Thomas Paine<\/p>\n
\u201cYou may fool all the dudes some of the time … you can even fool some of the dudes all of the time; but you can\u2019t fool all the dudes all of the time.\u201d Abraham Lincoln<\/p>\n
\u201cOne small step for a dude, one giant leap for Dudekind.\u201d Neil Armstrong<\/p>\n
And sadly, President Kennedy\u2019s famous inaugural speech line will become, \u201cAsk not what your country can dude for you; ask what you can dude for your country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Regardless, Dean Cartmill says he\u2019s okay with being called \u201cdude.\u201d Just don\u2019t call him a you-know-what.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was a teenager, I remember watching TV at Dean Cartmill\u2019s house. Dean was my best friend and one of the most even-tempered people around. Nothing seemed to make him angry. But on that particular occasion, Dean\u2019s dad sauntered into the TV room and greeted us with \u201cHi, girls.\u201d I didn\u2019t think much of it. I figured he was just being funny.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":214,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/214"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}