These crazy kids and their words these days ...

By Janet Jacobs

Danvers, Mass., has a new scandal a-brewin’ at the local high school.

Apparently, their teenagers say “meep.”

The principal, in an effort to stop the meeping around, recorded an automatic call to all the parents warning them that if their students say or display the word “meep” at school, they’d be suspended.

The trouble was written about in an article in the Salem News. Apparently, the issue escalated from the odd mischievous “meep” in school to a Facebook plan to take meeping to a higher level, according to the principal, Thomas Murray.

“It has nothing to do with the word,” Murray was quoted as saying. “It has to do with the conduct of the students. We wouldn't just ban a word just to ban a word.”

The article explained: “ ‘Murray said he called parents via the automated message phone system warning students not to use the term because ‘it would be seen as going against the request of the administration and cause a disruption to the school day.’”

Murray said students were not using the term to harass another student or a teacher.

"It's really about language and conduct," Murray said. "For me, it boils down to respectful conduct."

“Meep” of course, doesn’t mean anything. There’s the Muppet named Beaker who says “meep” instead of words, the Road Runner who cries either “meep meep,” or “beep beep,” depending on your interpretation, and then there’s the Monty Python Knights who say ‘Ni,” but which could easily be misinterpreted as “Meep.” Essentially, it was a teenage gag, and it would have been a blip on the high school radar except that now it’s gotten semi-national attention.

I think the only way Principal Murray could have delighted his students more would be if he had brought them pizza and served it while wearing a ballerina costume. You know they’ll be celebrating until graduation day and beyond. For the rest of the year, they’ll be wearing smug little smiles whenever they see the poor principal.

It’s almost a reflex that teenagers roll their eyes around adults, but the Danvers kids will probably need goggles to keep their eyeballs in their heads following this debacle.

I don’t know how much experience the Danvers principal has with teenagers, but I’m pretty sure that preemptively censoring meepings will only lead to other silly words, yes, perhaps even sillier words, if there are any.

My personal favorite meaningless word is “D’oh,” which is what Homer Simpson says when he realizes he’s been dumb, and which Principal Murray is probably using daily since banning “meep.”

Still, do we expect the children, who have been told meeps are off-limits, to refrain from zoinks, jeepers, wubbles, zowas, jinkies, and any number of other nonsensical terms that one could pick up off old “Scooby Doo” reruns? Realistically, we should not.

Meep could become a gateway word, leading to not only other ridiculous words, but even to real words that mean something, such as folderol, balderdash, lackadaisical, and dinky. And once they discover the wealth of new vocabulary experiences available to them, faster than a speeding road runner every teenager on the street will be carrying around a dictionary and a thesaurus and using words with more than one syllable, and even learning how to spell these words.

This being the 21st Century, they’ll carry these books as apps in their cell phones, but they’ll have them.

Oh, the horror, tribulation, consternation, chagrin, wretchedness and vexation of having literate teens. And once they can speak and spell, then they might want to talk to us, and we’d have to — brace yourself for this — listen to them.

I know what you’re saying now, “Oh, meep, no,” but yes, it could happen in our lifetimes.

Cross your fingers and hope it doesn’t, but prepare for the worst. Words could happen, and soon.

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Janet Jacobs is a Daily Sun staff writer. Her column appears on Sundays.

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