That's AWESOME!!!

Sometime back I became absolutely fed up with the frequent, repetitive, and insipid use of the word "Awesome" in everyday conversation.  I'm jtired of it.  "Awesome" becoming part of our everyday vernacular is a fairly recent phenomenon.  I don't think the term was used nearly as much ten or fifteen years ago, as it is today.  It's used to describe everything: a soccer game, a new haircut, Uncle Harry and Aunt Julie's new baby, the color of the spring grass just outside your front door, a pay raise, a new song, the dog next door, a writer's blog.  So what's up with "Awesome"?  I think the non-stop use of the word cheapens it, lessens its meaning each time it is invoked.  Now, I grant TV broadcaster Dick Vitale's entitlement to his college basketball signature tagline "It's AWESOME baby!" but outside of hearing it from him every weekend during the basketball season, I just wish people in our culture would develop a broader vocabulary.  And while we are on the subject, is there any reason we insert the word "like" into EVERY sentence we utter these days?  Again I ask, what's up, like, with that?  Surely our life experiences are not all reduceable to exclaiming" that's AWESOME" in every fifth sentence we utter.  Can't we think of any other adjective to describe something that impresses us, something we want someone else to appreciate?  Enough already with "AWESOME."  It just gives me a headache saying it.

Rod Haynes