I live next door to Boston University and thus, ride Boston’s subway (“the T”) with hundreds of BU’s finest each and every week.  Aside from paying far too much for college, all of BU’s students, at least the female students, have some things in common.  BU girls are easily identified by the fact that they all dress the same, which these days means black stretch pants, sunglasses that could double as an end table, and some kind of boots that scream “these are so expensive my father would get pissed I bought them even though most of his personal identity is wrapped up in how much he spoils me”. 

The other thing BU girls all have in common is that they view the T as their personal vehicle, which they regard as the proper venue for telephone conversations, or loud face-to-face conversations with friends about the alleged difficulty of sociology class.

Anyone who has ever ridden public transportation would admit that they would rather have bamboo shoved under their finger nails than smell body odor and stand in crowded vehicle listening to other people’s conversations about how they are uncomfortable with their office supervisor.  Once, two years ago, against my will, I was involved in such a T conversation with a guy I sort of knew from work who was a loud talker who decided that a rush-hour train ride was the right time to tell me, standing 12 feet away from him in an overwhelming crowd of people, about his frustrations with his job search and about his plans to purchase a new leather jacket. I still have nightmares.

The curious thing to me about the BU dynamic is that in addition to wearing a uniform, the girls from BU have adopted a bold new vocabulary which consists mostly of the word “literally”.  If you listen to one of these conversations the word literally has become everything from place filler, to silence eliminator, to means of accentuation, to means of exaggeration, to standalone sentence that sums up one’s entire feeling about the fact that one’s philosophy professor won’t allow for a second extension.   A typical conversation might go as follows:

Girl 1: I am so stressed about my exam, no literally, like I am literally not sleeping, like literally binge eating, yada yada.

Girl 2: I know, literally, me too, I just want to sleep all day and I am so nervous about next semester’s internship, like literally, I don’t even know if I want to be a teacher. I hate it, literally – I am NEVER getting a job.

Girl 1: Prof. Burns is literally like the biggest jerk ever.

Girl 2: Literally!

What’s funny about this use of literally, aside from the fact that it makes people sound like idiots, is that it is exclusively reserved for the lowest form of sarcasm, always in an attempt to be ironic or hyperbolic, and never in an attempt to be literal.  It is used as a sarcasm red flag in the unlikely event that one’s companions are not smart enough to know you do not seriously plan to sleep all day.

What I’ve determined is that this overuse of literally originated as a crutch – a way to bring sarcasm to the masses; a form of linguistic training wheels for people who were too scared to risk being misunderstood.  Over time, it has been adopted by people who do not appreciate its function, but who continue to use it just as baby boomers continue to ascribe some kind of importance to long distance telephone calls (and give them priority over other calls), even though the nearness of one’s partner in communication hasn’t had a practical impact in 45 years.

To me, the fun part of sarcasm is the risk one assumes by engaging in that sort of banter, mostly the risk that someone will not catch your drift and think you admire Donald Rumsfeld, or like Peter Gabriel or Nickelback and buy you the CD for your birthday.  While I’ve gotten to the bottom of the linguistic mystery, I’m still left wondering about the move to annoying, loud, public conversations.  I haven’t reached a definitive conclusion yet on this piece but have a couple of theories in the works that focus on obliviousness and entitlement and a possible connection to Long Island.

I feel a little like a crabby old man complaining about the annoying word selection of college kids, but someone should tell them.  It’s obvious their professors haven’t addressed this issue, and now that they’re planning to stay in bed and binge eat there’s a chance we’ll lose them forever - though not literally, which is a shame.