Notes of a Native Dude

Apparently, a linguist has deciphered the term 'dude'. Found in this news article. )

I remember watching Fast Times at The Movies in Victorville growing up a young desert dude. That and Purple Rain - in fact watching them both with a load of other dudes and dudettes. Seeing and hearing Spicoli use the term reified my own till then unconscious solidarity with the term - aterm which both defined me and allowed me to communicate with my speech community. Having had the world validated now as part of the larger social structure, that word definitely became part of my vocab for a long long time. I was a dude. It was a term of identity and endearment, a multipurpose word that could express a wide range of emotions without seeming uncool or having to say very much. "Awww, dude, you OK?" "Dude, you're one sick freak." "Dude! Careful." "Dude, pass the bong." Just using the term instantly included you in a culture, a place, an identity.

When I moved north to San Jose I noticed that it was used less, perhaps because the Bay Area is notorious for its high falutin cultural & intellectual aspirations (though some people, such as those who lived closer to the coast, still flagrantly and unashamedly used it). Using dude identifed you as a loser, a street scruff, a surfer stoner, a decidely non intellectual. It suggested a lower class, younger, uneducated, perhaps even intentionally affected surfer type dumbmness, a pose of dude ineptitude. Looking to move up in the world, I shed the term in hopes of becoming more mature, more refined, more cultured, and pretty much banished it from my vocabulary through grad school, as I perfected my wanna be educated, professorial voice.

Moving to Spain furthered my estrangement from the word, mainly because no one where was going to get it. while I realized that all cutlures have such a word. In Barcelona, for adults the word was "hombre" (man), which was used much like dude. For teens, it was "tio" which was uncle. E.g., "Que pasa, tio?" (S'up, dude?) or "Aaaaaa la, tio, que va? (Duuuuuude, what's up?)

After coing back to the US and moving on in my career and life, and having gradually sloughed of my pseudo intellectual persona by leaving academia, I unepectedly returned to the word (or it had found me, a linguistic prodgial son welcomed home with open arms and fatted up calves) after having not used it for almost a decade. I don't know why or how, but one day I gave in and just used it among a group of meat head jock dudes, and it felt like home - though I had no affintiy with these bruisers. Using dude in California gave me access social groups of men I would otherwise have nothing to say to - or even be admitted to. I could dude with my bros, real or social, bro-down with the homies, my peeps, and chill with all good dudes. Using it identified me as a Californian, a home dude, a native dude, a man from this land of the coast and mountains and desert, the promised land where all dudes prosper. I still use it, proudly, despite any pretensions I may have beyond my own white trash origins. I'm a dude, you're a dude, you're all dudes, we're all dudes. I have accepted my dudeness, and I am well! Bitchen, dude!

DUDES!!!