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| Goofin' around the Bob-o-Link Meadow near Wooded Island, 2010. |
I don't have anything big on my mind today. But yesterday, while I was taking a long walk on Wooded Island with my kids and my niece, listening to their lively banter, I realized something.
I love young-adult-speak. Who else talks about Homer's Odyssey and Homer Simpson in the same conversation? It's a seamless blend of erudite vocabulary and totally base language. It's like YA literature: unpretentious, relentlessly plot-driven, stimulating.
Years ago when she was still in middle-school, my daughter took rock climbing lessons with a few high school girls. One of the mothers asked if we could take turns carpooling, because the teenage chatter in the car was driving her nuts. I didn't tell her the truth: I genuinely loved it. Adult conversation is often so dull it makes me pick at my cuticles.
Bring on the young adults.
Omg! Go walking in Wooded Island (...on Wooded Island? is it an actual Island?) with me! I'm scared of anything south of Congress, and I'm assuming you know the ways of things.
ReplyDeleteAlso real YA dialogue is awesome. Just not so much fake YA dialogue like some of John Green's.
Oh, crap, you caught me. I agonized over that preposition, and I always do for islands! (Looking on google maps, it is in fact an actual island, although the Bob-o-Link meadow is on the "mainland.")
DeleteAnd yes, I'll take you to Wooded Island (the Japanese Garden is an awesome Chicago gem) and I promise you'll be safe! Fun fact: Wooded Island appears in the book that I recently sold to FSG, working title Plus One.
DeleteAgreed. Grown-up talk is tres dull. I don't want to hear about your love of Chardonnay or how much long-term care insurance costs or some dumb new diet you're on. Teenagers, even when they are being assholes or purposefully stupid, are way more interesting for me, too.
ReplyDeleteI think this makes us snobs, come to think of it.
DeleteMine are still preteens (what an awful word!), but the chatter has already started to get interesting. I confess to thoroughly enjoy eavesdropping on them with their friends in the car!!
ReplyDelete