Gayyyyyyyyy

Many teenagers use the word “gay” to express that they find something dumb. While I overlook the occasional utterance, I do question the word’s use by those who say it frequently. In one class, I have a student, “Ivan” who is otherwise fairly quiet except when expressing displeasure toward an assignment. Apparently, unbeknownst previously to me, most homework I assign enjoys being sodomized in the butt, or so I gather from Ivan’s cries of, “Gayyyyyyyyyyy.”

For this particular student, I’ll often stop the instruction to ask whether Ivan could think of a synonym (or as my students always say, “cinnamon”) to replace “gay.” Most often, Ivan opts for “stupid” or “lame.” One time, however, ey decided neither of those words fit the occasion properly (which led to an impromptu lesson on connotation!) and I offered another suggestion: “cheesy.” The students found this word to be a hoot, so many of them adopted it into their vocabulary as a way of reminding each other how square Mr. [Kevin] is for saying cheesy.

The other morning, Ivan was not excited to finish eir rough draft. “Gayyyyyyyy!” Ivan announced. “What other word could we use?” I asked. “Uh… cheesy?” Ivan tried. In this case, “cheesy” was probably not the most appropriate word choice for what ey wanted to convey, but I accepted it anyway. “All right, so your essay is cheesy?” I follow up. “I… uh… no!” Ivan says, frustrated. “I don’t want to say ‘cheesy.’ Saying ‘cheesy’ is gay.” For once, in a very roundabout way, I actually sort of agreed. “You mean that saying ‘cheesy’ is cheesy, right?” Ivan, now associating “cheesy” with homosexuality tried to find a way out of having to say the word. “What if I just do my rough draft?” Win-win!