‘Whack it like Fonzie’ and other things kids these days don’t get

If I can summarise the look, it expressed the view: “Oh poor Richard, he’s so old he’s forgotten my name is Trent, and now he thinks I’m called Ron, which, frankly, is not a name that anyone my age has had for many decades. I wonder if there’s a charity for old journalists to which I could make a small donation.”

Loading

As the lift took off, I felt like running up the five flights of stairs, to confront him on his exit. “Huh, huh, huh, huh (that would be me trying to get my breath back), that Ron thing is just an expression, you know, it’s Aussie slang for….”

At that point, I’d collapse from the strain of the stairs, plus the embarrassment of my predicament, and he’d be forced to carry my body to the ambulance while thinking: “How weird that I’m saving his life, and yet he still thinks I’m called Ron”.

Of course, his generation is not the first to grapple with the inexplicable expressions of the past. My mother, throughout my childhood, spoke in a Lancashire patois which prevented me from ever understanding a single thing she said.

My mother described people being “as mad as a two-bob watch”, which, I later worked out, described watches that were so cheap their mechanisms worked in a haphazard manner. But she also criticised me for “sitting there like cheese at four pence” – a reference to inactivity, since cheese at four pence was, in her mind, so expensive it would just sit in the store window, unpurchased.

Loading

My mother’s phrases have not stood the test of time. These days, no one wants to buy a watch, certainly not a cheap one, even though they now cost less than those French cheeses with built-in botulism. These days it should be “sitting there like a $10 watch” and “as mad as an imported cheese”.

Yet, despite my mother’s cautionary example, I continue to pepper my speech with expressions no one understands. “That’s a Claytons policy” I might say about one political party’s gambling policy, only to be faintly offended that no one knows what I mean. Or, “it’s a joke Joyce”. Or, “don’t mention the war”. Or, “it’s only a flesh wound.” (References: Graham Kennedy, Fawlty Towers, Python).

Or I’ll reference films: “call that a knife”, “tell him he’s dreaming” or “you’re terrible, Muriel” only to see the furrowed brow of my interlocutor.

The only good news: mainstream media has been so chopped and diced by the TV streaming services there’s now no such thing as a shared reference. Drop a line from a TV show from two months ago, and you’ll still get the confused look.

Maybe I should write a list of all these references, new and old, and pin it on the office notice board. I’d do it, if it weren’t easier to leave it to Ron.

A cultural guide to going out and loving your city. Sign up to our Culture Fix newsletter here.

To read more from Spectrum, visit our page here.