Like…Like…Like…..

I’m not much a grammar and literacy snob – let’s face it, my own grammatical skills could use a lot of work – but lately the poor use of the word “like” has been driving me batty. Maybe it’s because I am stuck in a city with 8 million people jammed on top of each other and I can’t help but overhear a lot of other conversations.

Last week I was in a fairly nice restaurant having a really nice meal of steamed mussels followed by some sautéed soft shell crabs. At the table just in front of me were these two fairly young chicks having martini’s and dinner. My first impression is that they shouldn’t have been able to afford to eat there on a college budget, but eyeballing the shopping bags told me they had other means of income (daddy?).

Well one of the chicks was the talker and the other chick was the listener. Unfortunately, the talker was facing my direction so I could hear her just fine. She really enjoyed using the word “like” to the point it really started grating on my nerves. I would estimate that on average she used the word “like” at least two times in every sentence, perhaps more. It started to ruin my meal.

I was seriously close to offering to buy them a bottle of wine on one condition – she would have to stop using the word “like” for the remainder of the meal unless she actually used the word in a preposition / simile, a conjunction, or a verb. In other words, as non-slang because you can’t figure out how to speak properly and choose more descriptive words. I buy the wine, and I pay for it until the word “like” spews from you mouth.
My guess is that she would have found it fairly insulting – which it would have been. But it’s driving me nuts lately. My favorite is when someone says something to the effect of “I was like….”
NO. You weren’t “like” whatever. You had a thought or a feeling or something and you either were or were not in a particular state. You weren’t “like…”

I catch myself using the word from time to time in the same manner and I try to stop myself and remember there is always a word or phrase that is more descriptive and appropriate. Maybe I’ll get some business cards printed on them with this URL and drop one off next time I am stuck to someone that has to use the word every ten seconds.