Thursday, October 2, 2008

What Does It Mean?

A friend asked me "What is regs?" I replied that I thought it meant regulations. But my friend explained that this "regs" was used in the context of phone text messaging by a teenager and it didn't seem to mean regulations.

I said "Oh. In that case I will do a little Internet research."

I turned to http://www.urbandictionary.com/ where I typed in "REGS" and clicked the search button.

Uh oh. I found three definitions all of which had to do with marijuana, namely 'regular' or low grade marijuana.

That was not good news for my friend but it was also what had been feared.

I was fascinated with the 3rd definition and the use of the word in a sentence which I herewith quote: "man you got dem regs to roll a fatty bo batty?"

At first I laughed at myself. I thought to myself "I have no idea what that means." The sentence that should have helped actually made my understanding worse.

So then I had to look up fatty bo batty. Actually I found hyphenated fatty-bo-batty. The resulting definition was "big ass blunt."

I thought I was pretty certain what "big ass" meant because, after all, I did blog about big ass fans once.

So then I had to look up "blunt" which gave me:

Cigar hollowed out and filled with marijuana, can be smoked in public (somewhat) inconspicuously.

Montel was sittin' on the porch all day, sippin' his 40 and smokin' blunts.
Nearly as I can tell a fatty bo batty is a big cigar that has been hollowed out and the tobacco replaced with marijuana of the regular or low grade type.

Then I searched "fatty-bo-batty" on the Internet and obviously it is a generic term with an assortment of meanings too numerous for me to figure out.

This exercise definitely made me feel old and over the hill.

It also made me really, really happy that I am not raising teenagers right now.

Then it made me really scared for my kids who are raising their own children.

I would have to take a course in this language if I were raising children.

I always laugh when I see those Internet ads directed at men about barely legal teenage girls. Because I think to myself that I once had a teenage girl in my home and I was awfully glad when she finally outgrew that time of life. She says she was glad, too.

I never ever tried marijuana or any other drug for that matter. I volunteered once at college for an experimental program with LSD. That was in the days when it was considered mind expanding and hey, I wanted mine expanded. The program turned me down though. I suppose that says something about my mind -- not sure what though.

That must sound very quaint. Maybe not as quaint as President Clinton's explanation but quaint all the same. Although someone else told me that he well understood about not inhaling because he had found it no so intuitive to inhale as some might think.

I remember a friend once who decided to smoke a cigarette and couldn"t figure out how to inhale it. He was sitting in my car at the Big W drive-in located on Broadway of our little town. He kept trying to light the cigarette while holding it in his hand. It was funny but I guess you had to be there.

There's lots more popular culture stuff I don't understand. For instance, pants that are worn way low. I don't understand that one bit. It looks awfully uncomfortable to me. What does it mean? Or the use of the word "like" for that matter. Or "absolutely." Or girls wearing pants that reveal a female "plumbers butt." I see that a lot now in various stores -- since I go to stores now. My pharmacist today had some kind of Chinese letters tattooed on her arm with a kind of spiky hairdo in hair dyed a brilliant red. I thought "cool" which I suppose must be really old school now. But I wondered what does it mean? What does it mean to her? What is it supposed to mean to me?

What does it mean?

3 comments:

Lori1955 said...

It's all really the same old thing that has been going on for generations. These kids all do the same thing in order to express their individuality. :)

The one that gets me is the use of the word "dude". I don't know if that's just a California thing or if all kids say it but I find it very irritating

As for the marijuana, I can't really say much. I did smoke in my younger days but then again, I did a lot of stupid things in my youth. It's a wonder i survived it all.

~Betsy said...

Dude cracks me up. I think there was a commercial or a movie (can't remember which right now) that showed the various use of the word. It's all in the tone.

Absolutely is today's equivalent to right on!

I try my best to stay up on current languages, though since my youngest graduated high school, I am also falling behind.

I hope your friend gets to the bottom of the regs and doesn't find any blunts. By the way, stash refers to where the teen hides their regs, blunts and other goodies. He should check it out.

¸.•*´)ღ¸.•*´Chris said...

I smoked my fair share of weed in my younger days. I quit though when I found it made me gain weight, hence the "munchies" afterward.

My husband's siblings still say "dude" and have addressed me as such. I don't care for it either and kindly asked them not to call me a dude in the future.