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“You got it, dude.” “Did I do that?”īut I was most fixated on the slang kicked around by the teenagers, who embodied that all-American fantasy. lineup, replete with era-defining catchphrases minted by young children or nerds. I worshiped at the altar of the late-1980s, early-90s T.G.I.F. I would have to pick another phrase and try again. And the words I had agonized over landed with a thud, drawing nothing more than a couple of perplexed glances and some snickers. It sounded, well, rehearsed, and nagged by an Arabic accent. Those in earshot would surely throw their arms over my shoulders, enamored, as they did on “The Cosby Show” or “Saved by the Bell.”īut as I hung there with blood pooling in my head, it never came out quite right. I planned to debut it at lunch - toss it out coolly, as if it had just dawned on me. I had convinced myself that delivering these words with the same lax-lipped American insouciance that the kids on my favorite family sitcoms had would transform me into a bubbly all-American girl who laughed down hallways with pals, instead of a Lebanese oddball whose classmates steered clear of. Recesses came and went, and my quest to perfect it continued. I tried comically extending the “whaaaat?” I tried curling the end slyly into a question or dropping it in a deadpan.

I repeated the phrase, “Say what?” - an expression of shock I’d heard many times on TV - over and over to no one.

Hanging upside down on the monkey bars of my elementary school playground in Missouri, I practiced a morsel of slang I found so intoxicatingly American, I had to have it for myself. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.

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