High School Junior Cannot Stop Using the Word 'Dude'

TEMPLE CITY, CA — High school junior Byron Carter has tried unsuccessfully for the last six months to utter a complete sentence that does not include the word “dude.”

“I got really close in August,” said Byron, 15, “but then, dude, it just started coming out.”

Carter’s parents blame society, popular culture, the media, technology, and other “outside influences” for their son’s aberrant speech pattern. “Ya know,” said Harold Carter, “with all these crazy video games, ya know, and all these crazy people, ya know, doing — ya know — whatever, it’s just almost impossible, ya know, to correct this, ya know — whatever y’call it — ya know. Ya know what I’m saying?”

Byron has been attending speech therapy sessions at his school five-days-a-week, but the results have been less than impressive. “This blonde chick tries to get me to say things without ‘that word’ in it,” he explained, “but — dude — the whole time I’m just checking out her humongous breasts. Dude, you gotta see this. Seriously, dude.”

Madeline Carter said her son’s language deficiency is an embarrassment to the whole family. “It’s like, every time we go anywhere, he’s all, like, ‘Dude this’ and ‘Dude that,” she said. “Like, I know other parents are being very, like, critical for the way we, like, raise him and stuff like that, but, like, I think it’s totally — like — unfair. Like.”

Byron has started to resent all the attention paid to him due to his vernacular. “Dude, this is getting lame, dude,” he was overheard telling one of his friends in homeroom. “Let’s skip fifth period, dude, and get some burgers. Dude, you listening to me? Dude, wake up!”

Although Principal Charles Fenton has held several meetings with Byron’s parents and teachers to try to ameliorate the situation, he does not feel overly concerned for the student’s unique language challenge. “Man,” said Fenton, “if someone gave me a dollar, man — man, I mean just one single dollar — for every student at this school, man, who overuses a particular colloquial form of dialogue — man, I’d be a millionaire.”

“Man,” he added, “that’s a lot of money.”