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| Dammit Chloe, I been sleep! |
The Backstory: One of my secrets is that I love trashy television shows, despite how damaging I think they can be on our culture and particularly young girls' views of themselves. Things like Bridezillas, Bad Girls Club, and America's Next Top Model, where you have a mix of prim and proper English and colloquialisms and slang being spoken by girls from different walks of life. Usually, as the shows get trashier, the grammar gets worse and the slang increases. The other night, I was watching a Bad Girls Club marathon, in preparation for the new season starting. During one particular episode, Hubby sat on the couch next to me to cuddle, and witnessed a scene which left him confused. In the scene, 6 of the girls in the house were drinking and laughing, being a bit loud and generally causing a boozy ruckus. The 7th girl, who had been in bed, got up and flipped out on the others, throwing punches and screaming things like "I been sleep. When I be sleep, you need to respect that I be sleep. You so rude, I BEEN SLEEP". Notice she never said we is, was, or had been asleep, the proper adverb form, but instead says she simply is or was or had been sleep, which is a noun.
Hubby kept asking me "how can she be sleep?". I went on to explain that this is a common slang way of saying that one had been asleep. He said he had never heard this before, and I replied that clearly, he was not watching enough trashy television, as I was quite familiar with the saying, no matter how much it made my ears bleed to hear it.
Today, he sent me a text message that said "Hey.... I be sleep". Then, I commissioned a cartoon depicting this. He surpassed even my greatest expectations.
(for those not in the know, Chloe is our youngest dachshund puppy, who likes to squeak all hours of the night and wake him up. I miraculously sleep through it 99% of the time)
