Published: May 08, 2008 10:06 pm         

She thinks he’s cute in his little blue suit

For some reason my middle-aged friends and I don’t understand, we’re apt to have a problem with anyone or anything that involves a name. We can easily remember other stuff, but names pose a challenge.

Without taking even one note, I recalled enough of my trip to Gettysburg to fill more than a newspaper page — but forgot that the name of the store where I bought my forage cap is “The Regimental Quartermaster,” not “Regimental Headquarters” as I told you last week.

My father alerted me to some things that would happen as I got older, but this wasn’t one of them. He and my mother were teachers, and they rarely met a former student whose name they didn’t remember. Wasn’t their problem.

Something else they failed to warn me about was a generational language gap I’d noticed, but not given much thought, until my buddies and I went to breakfast in Gettysburg.

Our waitress was a bubbly young woman who inspired Gary to say, “She probably has no idea how difficult it is for people like us to deal with somebody who’s been taking cheerful pills this early in the day.”

He and Mark ordered ham, eggs and potatoes (I even remembered that). When it came my turn, I said I’d have the buffet.

“Awesome!” she erupted with a beaming smile.

My buddies asked why I had winced, and I said it’s because I’m frequently around young women — which is a good thing, and I have no complaints about it — and “Awesome!” is a mainstay in their vocabulary. (Richard Pryor said the biggest defense sweet young things have against evil old middle-aged guys is that “They speak.”)

This is not a flaw to be held against them. That’s just how it is, and it’s not limited to women. I also hear younger guys say “Awesome!” and I’m sure my friends and I had grammatical quirks that made our parents grind their molars. One of my closest male friends, who’s now deceased, said “You know what I mean” so often that we counted them.

To me, “awesome” is a perfectly fine word when used in the descriptive sense (i.e., “That was a awesome shot y’all made on that deer.”), but as a stand-alone exclamation it’s almost as worn out as “Oh, wow!” One girl on “Antiques Roadshow” told the appraiser “Oh, wow!” so many times that I began to understand what makes some people want to lock their children in closets.

With each orbit that brought our effervescent waitress back to us, we looked at each other with anticipation, waiting for an “Awesome!” She didn’t disappoint us, except for once when she cut loose with “Great!”

Now, it seems like every place I go, every time I watch TV — whatever — I hear someone say, “Awesome!”

This may be divine justice. I’m a Shrek fan, and a few years ago during a TV commercial he rooted around and dug out an enormous ear nugget, then exclaimed, “Oh, that’s huge!” (Donkey found it and thought it was hair dressing.)

I was enthralled. Thereafter, each time I heard the word huge, I would say, “Oh, that’s huge!” in my best Shrek voice. This came to a head when my then-girlfriend and I were attending a play. When one of the characters said something was huge, she whispered that “Teeth will be flying.” It was definitely an “Uh-oh” moment. She tells me that she is only now getting to the place where she can hear huge! without cringing.

My buddies were sweating vigorously in their woolen Civil War replica Union uniforms at Little Round Top when a young woman came up to them and asked, “Do you wear those because it’s cool?”

I almost said, “Holy (smoke), honey! It’s 85 degrees out!” but then realized she was using “cool” the same way my contemporaries and I do; call it our version of “Awesome!” Younger people usually say, “coo-ul,” but she made it only one syllable like us older folks do, and that threw me off.

Dad also told me that as I grew older, younger women would begin to think I was cute. (Women of all ages thought he was adorable.) I’m not there yet, but at least one of my buddies is — the one who’s not married, I should point out, in case the other guy’s wife reads this.

A pretty girl sitting next to him at the bar complimented him on his taste in beer. I was drinking the same beer, but she ignored me and the other (married) guy — who was drinking a beer she apparently didn’t care for.

My buddies were in their uniforms and I was in my civilian clothes. (Most of the re-enactors wear their uniforms wherever they go in Gettysburg, and — like all uniforms — they’re what my English cousins would call “crumpet-catchers.”)

The girl told my friend, “I’m a lot older than I look, you know. I’m really 90.”

“That’s OK,” he said, “I’m a lot older than I look, too.”

I stared down at my beer and shook my head. Smooth, buddy. Real smooth.

She fussed over him occasionally for the next hour or so, and I remember thinking, Dad was right. She’s not trying to take him home. She thinks he’s cute in his little blue suit.

I was waiting for her to try on his cap, but she didn’t; she actually went one better: When she got up to leave, she asked for a sip of his beer. She had been involved with a lethal concoction called a Long Island Iced Tea and explained that, “I want to go home with a good taste in my mouth.” Uh-huh.

He let her have a tug at his beer, then smiled at me and shrugged.

“Hey, brother,” I told him, “I have got to get me one of them @•#ø§©¡! uniforms.”