LTAM, TTYL, PIR, ETC.

by Joan Herlong

We’ve parked the computer that our children still don’t realize they are lucky enough to share, let alone have, in the kitchen area so that we can be aware of when they’re on it, and for how long.

We don’t have too much worry about where they are when on it, because we’ve lectured and sermonized about “stranger danger” on the Internet. For the inevitable event that they decide to ignore our stirring sermons, we’ve also installed a “Safe Eyes” program that is so puritanical in its strictures against inappropriate sites or topics that they’ve had to give up IM’ng their friend Fanny.

If you don’t know what IM’ng is, you are way behind on your hip acronyms. They’re de rigueur if you want to maintain your delusion of open communication with your kids. I think it stands for “Instant Messaging,” sort of an electronic version of the old party line, where news of break-ups, new romances, ugly rumors, uglier truths, and even occasionally useful news about pop quizzes travels at exponential rates within the dependent set.

The other day I walked into the room while my youngest was tearing back and forth across the keyboard, dishing about sonnets and quatrains, no doubt. I’m sure it was academic in nature because she pushed a button and the screen went blank the moment I asked, “What’s new?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh… I get it,” I winked. “PIR so TTFN.”

“What?”

I like to remind my kids from time to time that I know a few things about a few things within their set. They always look a little nauseous during these tete á tetes, but it reminds them that I’m a lot cooler than they’d like to think.

“I get it – Parents In Room, so Ta Ta For Now.”

She cut me a look that should take years off my life, and intoned, “OMG… you are so L-A-M-E!”

OK, I did get that. LAME is not an acronym so much as an anthem. It actually stands for “lame” as in hopelessly queer, gross, ignorant, unfashionable, or some other chronic and embarrassing failure.

OMG is an acronym for “OH… MAH…GAH.” It morphed from earlier, pre-teen days when all news, good or bad, was greeted among their set by repeating this mantra while frantically jumping and clutching one another’s arms.

Now that they are 14 and so over that middle school brand hysteria, it has shortened to merely “OMG,” and always delivered with deadpan sarcasm.

I get OMG a lot. Almost as often as TMI.

TMI is not exclusive to teens, but almost. If you’re lucky enough to live with people who do not editorialize about every blessed thing you say, then perhaps you’re not hip to this acronym for “Too Much Information.”

I hear TMI from them every time I mention anything having to do with my pre-married or pre-mom years when their dad was just someone I stalked, or anything having to do with their parents and even partial nudity.

TMI is actually a very handy conversational rudder. My girls tell me it really tamps down unwanted info about friends’ lunar cycles, Sisyphean boyfriend dramas, and visits to the dermatologist.

 When my mother recently complained that she knew far more than she cared to know about her friends’ various procedures or the vagaries of peristalsis, I suggested she try smiling and saying “TMI.”

Problem is, accurate hearing is so spotty within her set that TMI is too often mistaken for “Oh my!” which is, ironically enough, a rhetorical invitation to elaborate.

We have a few acronyms developed within the bosom (TMI) of our own family that enhances economy of expression around here.

DQ is for Drama Queen. It’s uttered, usually under one’s breath, when someone is perhaps exaggerating the impact of a recent event on the speaker’s emotional, financial, social and/or academic stability.

Q is for Queen, as in Queen of Bathroom Talk. It’s been a long time since we’ve had to bark this acronym in the wake of giggling about any topic that is best confined to the bathroom. Luckily, this alimentary source of humor seems to ebb in kids about the same time that OH MAH GAH settles down to OMG.

MFM means “More For Me.” This is rarely uttered when I’ve prepared some delicious dessert that one of the kids somehow doesn’t like (because I never make dessert). It usually means something like “more brussel sprouts for me,” something healthy that the kids have not tuned into yet, so the servings for brussel sprout aficionados are happily larger.

LTAM has more mileage on it than any other. It stands for “Let’s Talk About Me.” I know a lot of you are thinking, “What’s wrong with that?” And you’re absolutely right, which is why I hear it more often that I’d like.

This acronym was first served up at our dinner table, when conversation, if you could call it that, was full of non-sequitors focusing on the self.

One memorable example is when one child’s response to a long tale of woe just shared by a sibling was, “Hey, that reminds me of something: me!” And then she proceeded to chatter on about something that interested her, usually herself, leaving the sibling’s tale of woe in the conversational ash heap. It was the most blatant example of Let’s Talk About Me that it was instantly shorthanded to LTAM.

Unfortunately, LTAM became our kids’ rejoinder to almost all conversational detours at the dinner table that we’ve tried to steer away from it by discussing world events, the local economy, or academics. But those topics have a hard time competing with “me” for most people.

I could go on and elaborate on other family acronyms, but my children insist that they would all fall too squarely, too embarassingly under TMI and/or LTAM, so TTFN.

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