The laughter coming from the living room was a sound I hadn’t heard in a while. My teen daughter and three of her closest friends were huddled over their phones, speaking a language that sounded like a fever dream of internet acronyms and rhythmic syllables.
I stood in the kitchen, holding two steaming boxes of pepperoni pizza, and felt a surge of misguided confidence. I didn’t want to be the “lame” dad who just dropped off food; I wanted to be the “chill” dad who understood the culture. I had been studying. I had been scrolling. I was ready.
I tried to bond with my teen daughter and her friends by using their slang.
I kicked the door open with my foot, balancing the boxes like a waiter in a high-end bistro. I put on my best “cool guy” face—which probably just looked like I was having an allergic reaction—and made my entrance.
I walked into the room and said, “‘This pizza is totally yeet, fam.‘“.
I waited for the cheers. I waited for them to tell me how “lit” I was. I waited for a high-five.
None of those things happened.
Instead, the laughter died instantly. Four sets of eyes turned toward me, filled with a mixture of pity, confusion, and genuine alarm. The silence was so loud it physically hurt. It was a heavy, airless vacuum that seemed to suck the very warmth out of the pizza boxes.
I stood there, still smiling, but the smile was beginning to twitch.
“Is… is it not yeet?” I stammered.
My daughter didn’t roll her eyes. She didn’t groan. She looked at me with the kind of deep, sincere worry you usually reserve for an elderly relative who has forgotten where they are.
My daughter asked if I was having a stroke.
I set the pizza down on the coffee table and retreated to the kitchen in a state of total social bankruptcy. I realized then that “yeet” is apparently an action, not an adjective, and that “fam” is a privilege that must be earned, not a label you can just apply to a group of terrified fourteen-year-olds. I spent the rest of the night in my room, speaking only the King’s English and wondering if I could ever look at a slice of pizza again without feeling the ghost of that deafening silence.