Their bedrooms are "ground zero." Translation? A total mess.
A mean teacher? He's "such a terrorist."
A student is disciplined? "It was total jihad."
Petty concerns? "That's so Sept. 10."
And out-of-style clothes? "Is that a burqa?"
It's just six months since Sept. 11, but that's enough time forthe vocabulary of one of the country's most frightening days tobecome slang for teenagers of all backgrounds, comic relief in schoolhallways and hangouts.
"It's like 'Osama Yo Mama' as an insult," offered Morgan Hubbard,17, a senior at Quince Orchard High School in Gaithersburg, wherestudents have picked up on the phrase from an Internet game.
"If you're weird, people might call you 'Taliban' or ask if youhave anthrax," said Najwa Awad, a Palestinian American student atJ.E.B. Stuart High School in Fairfax County. "Sept. 11 has been sucha stressful thing that it's okay to joke a little bit. It's funny."
Language has always been as malleable and erratic as the day'sheadlines, and young people have always been some of the mostinnovative and playful in linking world events to their dailyvernacular. But it's more than what it seems on the surface.
"When you have adolescent bravado and nothing can hurt you,underneath that is really a tremendous fear that everything can hurtyou," said Alan Lipman, executive director of the Center atGeorgetown for the Study of Violence. "What better way than humor totake these horrific ideas and make them go away?"
The center is doing an in-depth study of college-age and teenagestudents and how they got through the first such attack of theirlives.
"My friends call me 'terrorist' or 'fundamentalist,' sometimes asa nickname," said Nabeel Babaa, 17, who came to this country fromKuwait when he was 3 years old and is now a senior at Sherwood HighSchool in Olney. "It's not hurtful in the way we say it, 'cause weare kidding around with each other."
When Muslim students call themselves "Osama," Lipman said, theyare trying to take back the power of being called such things, justlike members of other minority groups who take negative words and usethem on one another.
"They are trying to joke around, which takes the air out of it andshows how ridiculous it all is," Lipman said. "Then they feel a senseof connection over joking about it."
Only popular comics on television, radio and the Internet have asmuch influence on the national parlance as do brazen adolescents withtheir energy and uninhibited desire to craft their own language,linguistic and sociology experts said.
Teenagers breeze through such expressions as "He's as hard to findas bin Laden," or "emo" to describe people who are very emotionalabout Sept. 11. (It traditionally referred to brooding, pop punkmusic.) Girls might say a boy is "firefighter cute" instead of themore common "hottie."
And using Sept. 11 words to crack that well-turned one-liner orpithy witticism has calmed some frazzled nerves.
"We're able to make jokes and aren't as overly sensitive asbefore," said Jonathan Raviv, 17, a senior at Bethesda-Chevy ChaseHigh School. "You don't want to offend anyone. But sometimes it's alittle insensitive, and that's the nature of the joke."
Teachers worry that such slang could cross the line between funnyand offensive.
"There was some concern about this sort of thing, and teachers areconscious of this," said Jon Virden, an English teacher at Bethesda-Chevy Chase. "It does bring up the issue of what is the lag time tolaugh at something like this. But students were considerate of this."
The lag time after Sept. 11 was significant; round-the-clock newsreplaced all other programming, and laughter was rare. But the first"safe zone" for jokes and slang emerged -- the enemy, bin Laden andthe Taliban -- and others soon followed.
"Terror humor," as it's called by those studying the phenomenon,is even going to be the subject of a special panel organized by PaulLewis, an English professor at Boston College, for a conference ofthe International Society for Humor Studies this summer in Forli,Italy.
"Teenagers may be quicker to be more irreverent or raw and lesslikely to have their emotions repressed," he said. "There was a timeright after the attacks when humor just stopped. But I thought thereturn of humor was very much predicted. Disasters don't take awayhumor."
Slang has always bubbled to the surface during crisis points. Somefades quickly, but some becomes a part of the national lexicon. Andyoung people are comfortable being sassy sooner than adults are --think "going postal," "the mother of all battles" or "nuke 'em."
"Teenagers' language tends to be more vivid and lively than grown-ups' language," said Geoffrey Nunberg, a senior researcher at theCenter for the Study of Language and Information at StanfordUniversity and author of the book "The Way We Talk Now."
"Out here you hear [teenagers] say, 'That's so Sept. 10. . . . Or,'That's some weapons-grade salsa,' " Nunberg said.
Inside J.E.B Stuart High, one of the most ethnically diverseschools in the country, students say they do use caution when joking.
"Since we actually do have students who wear burqas, it's not likewe are going to say that," said Deidre Carney, 16, who is editor ofthe school newspaper. "But we do make a few anthrax jokes -- likesince there is so much construction going on, we might joke thatthere is anthrax."
Other students said it's easier to joke because everyone knowseach other in a school that has no majority ethnic or racial group.
"If you do something to offend someone, then that's cold," saidRyan Hoskin, 17, a senior at Stuart. "But a lot of times we don't,and we are just looking for a way to deal with the crisis. It's likeyou need comedy."
Hoskin said that if a white student tells a joke involving peopleof Arab background, he expects to hear one back about the whitestudents who were involved in the shootings at Columbine High Schoolin Colorado.
After all, humor should help you through. But it should also befair, he said.
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