So when is a dick not a dick?

Press, 21 October 1989, Page 21

So when is a dick not a dick?

Rosaleen M c Carroll

This week I received a letter from a reader gently chiding me for the way the teenager addresses her father — typically as a nerd, retard, weino or dick. Now 1 hasten to add this was a perfectly agreeable letter written in that immaculate sloping hand which looks so good on a blackboard. The writer is a school teacher.

Her scholarly background was also reflected in her academic but rather inflexible (I thought) apioach to language? Did I realise “dick” meant penis? Yes, I do know that is one possibility but there are many many others.

I hark back to the time when dick was nothing more than an appellation for a person of Y-chromo-some persuasion christened “Richard.” Nowadays those former Dicks probably prefer to use their Christian names in full.

Weino, says my correspondent refers to wino or alcoholic. I checked with my impeccable source who was (I thought) studying school certificate maths with her cousin Emma. Instead I found her counting her zits, with Emma double checking to make sure she wasn’t cheating.

“Get real Mum. You’re such a grippal Dad’s not a dipso.” while my correspondent has been perceptive enough when she identifies my teenager as less than venerable in her respect for her elders, she does her a disservice if she thinks she is a crea-

ture so lacking in wit and imaginaton as to use the language as rigidly as she suggests.

If the teenager wanted to call her father an alcoholic, as she instinctively knows, there are so many better ways of doing it. He could be a hophead, a boozician, a juice-freak or even a lush! But to get back to dicks. The teenagers were surprised that my correspondent should see dicks in such a strictly clinical sense or even, as the correspondent also suggested, as an insult. “I’ve been calling people dicks since I was in standard three and I believed in Santa Claus until I was in form one so I couldn’t possibly have known about the sexual connection!” said my teenager, following her own impeccable train of logic.

“Do you call people dicks? I asked my niece, Emma. “All the time!" “Who do you call

dicks?” “Everyone.” I was shocked. “Even in a private school?”

“Of course! Why wouldn’t I? You’re such

'an unco!” “Unco?” I was immediately alert to ever changing subtleties of language, “Is unco a noun or a verb?”

“It’s a dick! ” said the teenager, frustrated that I should be so obtuse. “But is it a insult?” “Of course not!”

“What would be an insult?”

She shrugged. “Snothanger.” “When do you use a word like that? I asked anxious to stay abreast of current mores. The teenager shrugged again. “Yeah! Just like nerd,” agreed Emma. "I mean if

someone hands in their assignment three weeks ahead of time ... what else would you call them?”

In spite of many years making a modest living putting one word in front of another, I honestly had no better suggestion. So I asked her why she thought dick, nerd, retard or weino were not insulting terms.

“They just aren’t, unless the person who says them is very upset and shouting ... they would never make you cry ... not like ‘Neighbours’-... I cried so many times last week ...” “Like when ...?”

“When Lucy fell in the well, when Paul’s wife died, when Scott fluffed his exams and his dad yelled at him, when Charlene and Scott broke up, when Ruth decides to go back to London ... She sniffs in delicious anticipation of next week’s weep-ins when she, like her cousins, will sit glued to this latter day Aussie TV classic with its copious power to move. “Well, what do you say when you pay someone a compliment?” I said, interrupting the reverie. “You don’t use words like that (like dick) when you want to compliment someone.” “What do you say?” “You say something like ... you’re looking very nice today.” "And what do they say.” “When the moment is right.” “They usually say ...” “000 ... get real! You’re such a dick!"