A trend I've observed in the past few years finally addressed through written form

Isn't That Coot!
Getting down with what's up

By Jeanne Marie Laskas
Sunday, May 6, 2007; W39

The phone rings. I recognize the number on my caller ID as Erik, a young man I employ from time to time to assist me with office work.

"Hello?"

"Hey, what's up?" he says.

Um. What's up? I have to pause, think. I tell him I'm sitting at my desk, writing some e-mails. I tell him my dog threw up. I tell him I was just about to call my mom and ask her what she wants for her birthday. I think that about sums up all that's . . . up. Is there anything else? I have a sinus headache threatening, I think. Should I include that? Why am I saying all of this? I feel, from his question, pressure to . . . synthesize.

"Great," he says. "Well, I had a question about invoices."

And that's it. None of the what's up of my day enters into our conversation. It's left hanging in the limbo of dropped topics. Why did I just go through all of that?

This keeps happening. It's not just Erik. It's a lot of people, most of them younger than I. They call. They don't identify themselves. (It's assumed these days that we all have caller ID?) They say, "Hey, what's up?" Or, the alternative, "Hey, what's going on?"

It's an aggressive greeting. It's the caller putting all the work on the callee, forcing her to think, encapsulate, come up with something interesting. I am not, after all, the one who called. You're calling me, so why aren't you telling me what's up?

Except . . . and I am just now figuring this out . . . the question is not meant literally.

"Hey, what's up?" is the new "How are you?"

The answer to, "Hey, what's up?" is never, "My dog threw up." The answer, I am learning, is, "Hey, what's up?" thus turning the conversation back over to the caller. Same as with, "How are you?" The answer is never, "I pulled my groin." The answer is always, "Fine. How are you?"

It's the old conversational dance, and the youngsters have a new step.

Just noticing this makes me feel like a miserable old curmudgeon. I am now in the position of having to translate the words of our nation's young people. This is so depressing. This is how you know you're turning into a dinosaur: when the

language is changing, and you have to work to keep up.

It's as if I just noticed that jeans are supposed to be on the hips nowadays and not at the waist (or has it changed back already?). Language begins as fashion. You're either with it, or you're not. Language is about inclusion and exclusion. I want to be hip. I want to be young. I don't want to be an old coot who doesn't know what's up.

Even trying to understand this is nerdy and curmudgeonly. Styles of greeting don't necessarily mean anything. The French say "Ca va?" and answer with "Ca va." Or at least they did back when I was taking college French. Greetings may as well be grunts, noises we make that roughly translate to: "Hello, human. I am a human, too, and I come to you with thoughts to exchange." How you go about communicating that offers no real lessons about values or civility. Looking back to the good old days of an empty "How are you?" as somehow more polite than an empty "What's up?" is really just a display of old cootness.

So, I must stop. I must simply get with it. I must practice, quietly, saying, "Hey, what's up?" or the alternative, "Hey, what's going on?" -- which is the expected answer to the greeting "Hey, what's going on?" I must spread the word to other coots. I must call my sister Claire, who is two years older than I and who always scores higher on the cootness meter. A few summers ago, for example, I had to coax her to throw away her waist-high mom jeans and get into the low-slung groove. She has learned to trust me blindly. She may or may not be grateful she has me helping her stay hip, but the point is, I'm grateful I have her to make me feel, by comparison, less pathetic.

So, I dial. I feel downright heroic, offering up my services. I think about how I will persuade her not to give me a snapshot of her day when I say, "Hey, what's up?" I will show her the way.

"Hello?" she says.

"Hey, what's up?" I say, aggressively, pointedly, in-her-face hiply.

"Hey," she says. "What's up?"

I pause. "Why did you say that?" I ask.

"Huh?"

"Why didn't you tell me, literally, what's up with your day? Don't you have a Bundt cake burning or something?"

She has no idea what I'm talking about. This is infuriating. "I said, 'What's up?' and you didn't answer me with anything but, 'What's up?' Why did you do that?"

"I don't know," she says. "Isn't that just what people say now?"

"Yeah," I tell her. "Yeah, it is."