If you know what “cowabunga!” means, then we’re probably friends.
The latest Magic: The Gathering set to be released next weekend is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and so I’ve naturally signed up for the pre-release party with some of my nerdier friends. I shared this news with my kids this morning as we sat around the breakfast table, and then punctuated my excitement with a triumphant, “Cowabunga!”
Not for the first time, all I got from them was tumbleweed.
“You know, those cartoon green turtles with the swords and knives doing all that ninja stuff? Donatello, Michelangelo, Master Splinter?”
Nothing. I have three intelligent, articulate kids who watch as much TV as I ever did (a lot), and yet it was like I was speaking another language. Just before getting too deflated, however, I realised that many of the words they use around the table are just as unfamiliar to me, and I’m forever asking them to speak in words I might understand.
“Cooked.” “Aura.” “Mid.” And the one that really dislocates me – “Bro”.
Bro? What’s all that about? I’m your father, dudes!
I guess Wittgenstein was on to something when he observed that “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”1
So breathe in. And out.
It’s all going to be OK. Next week I’ll be sitting around another table, but this time… dudes… this time I’ll be feeling like a hero in a half shell!
Cowabunga, indeed.
- Wittgenstein, L. (1922). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Proposition 5.6. ↩︎
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