Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

Is there a word or a phrase you use (or overuse) all the time, and are seemingly unable to get rid of? If not, what’s the one that drives you crazy when others use it? 

This reminds me of a story. I was 25 and living in Kentucky, working in social service ministry. I had a car, a good place to live and a nice (seemingly at least) boyfriend so I had a lot of privilege. I also had a tendency to use the phrase “cool” and I have no idea why – I guess it just stuck from high school. One day, I was driving with a neighbor – his name was Danny – to a job and he mentioned to me that his daughters were making him nuts using my pet phrase “cool” – Brandy and Danielle were 5 and 7 I believe. Apparently, they thought I was cool and so emulating me was cool. And poor Dad. LOL. I was a little flabbergasted because I never thought of myself as emulatable and certainly not cool. Plus, I had no idea how to eliminate the source of the problem. I tried to catch myself, but I simply ended up giving Brandy and Danielle a series of other slang terms to use. Awesome. Groovy. Perhaps even righteous? Probably not.

I’m sure I still say “cool” far too often. Ledcat uses it, too, so we obviously don’t annoy one another in that regard.

So after I wrote this, I decided to finally Google my friend and her kids. I was very sad to learn that she had passed away, but I chatted online with her daughter this morning. I cried when she typed “cool” in a sentence. I didn’t bring up this story. She did tell me that her mom talked about me as much as I spoke about her.

I’m going to cry some more. But that’s cool.

PS – there are a lot of terms people use that irritate me, but given that i’ll never get to talk with my friend now – I’m going to try and not focus on what irritates me.