This makes me think of a children’s book we most certainly read to our children as they were toddlers into preschool and kindergarten years titled, “Are You My Mother?” by P.D. Eastman. A baby bird goes in search of its mother and it is somewhat comical as there are pictures of all sorts of animals it comes across, while searching for its mother.
I will relate this to my teenage son and daughter who are not going around asking who their mother is. If you have small children perhaps they still call you mommy, an older child may call you mom, and enter the teenage years and suddenly this endearing term “Bruh” comes to define me as my teenage children’s mom. Bruh is slang for brother, or meaning a male friend. Now, this is funny to me, as I am definitely female and identify as such. Surprisingly I went straight from mom to bruh, not mom to ma. I am definitely confused as I am not his brother and I am not male. How did I get this nickname? Many parents across America are scratching their heads while pondering the same question.
The teenagers these days -speak differently than when I was a teen in the 90’s, not that we didn’t have slang as well, we did- it was just different! Teens today say things like “cap” to explain that’s the truth, whereas my generation may have said, “word”. Anyone who listened to songs played in the 90s could relate to Vanilla Ice’s- Ice Ice Baby song with lyrics that included, “word to your mama”, which would be like “cap” or truth in today’s slang. We used to say things were cool/dope, and that is considered fire today, whereas something that is bad is trash.
Well, this is teenage slang and it’s nothing new, but the slang has changed. But, being called bruh is trash, and it feels like I’m being ripped on (burned!) and that’s cap!-WORD TO YOUR MAMA! (Oh Wait-wrong generation).
