Typical conversations with my children begin with “Hey Dude. “Such as, “hey dude, what’s for dinner?” Or,” hey dude, did you hear about this?” Or, “No way, dude!”
As I recall, the term dude usually referred to a man. According to Wikipedia, from the 1870’s to the 1960’s, a dude was a man that was dressed in fancy clothes–he didn’t fit into the westward movement or the cowboy way of dressing. It was considered a derogatory label.
However in the pot smoking, hippy generation of the 1960’s, all men were referred to as dude. My belief is that most were so stoned that they didn’t want to waste their energy opening their eyes to see who they were talking to, so any deep voice that spoke to them was called “dude.”
I have heard my voice on tape, I do not have a low voice, nor am I a man–at least I wasn’t last time I looked.
Didn’t woman work so hard to get the word man out of postman to mail carrier and fireman to firefighter? Now women have lost all their identity and instead of using the word man, they answer to dude.
I want women to do what they want to do, but can’t we maintain our gender, and not make everything uni-sex?
The reason this has bothered me so much today is that there was a mouse in the house–specifically in the pantry. When I saw it, I screamed and screamed like a banshee. I jumped up and down pulled my pants legs up to my chin and screamed again.
Both children were in the house and were definitely within earshot of my voice.
No one came to my rescue! No one seemed concerned that there was something wrong. I don’t scream when I see spiders or bugs or other things, but mice and rats make me scream bloody murder.
About a half an hour later, they come rambling into the kitchen and asked,” hey dude, what were you screaming about?”
The only reason that I can figure out why they didn’t come running to save their mother was because they consider me a dude and a dude, ie. man, can take of himself.
I am MOM, not dude–come and rescue me.