The other day I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen since elementary school. Feeling excited, intrigued and slightly shocked that puberty had done him so well, we started catching up on the past seven years of our lives.
After getting past the formalities, the infamous “Where do you go to school” question made its appearance. Despite feeling the need to get my school’s name tattooed on my forehead because that was probably the millionth time I’d answered that question that week, I boringly told him “Miami Dade College Wolfson Campus.”
His immediate response to my answer was “You mean the one in Downtown? The one with all the hobos?”
As I began to nod my head in agreement, I was suddenly stopped by the little angel that occasionally makes its appearance on my shoulder.
“Hobo” wasn’t a foreign term. As a matter of fact, I had heard it a thousand times before, used it on occasion and even accepted it as common slang. However, this time when he used the word “hobo” I was deeply offended. It wasn’t “time of the month”, either — his use of the word simply led me into a train of thought that I had never even boarded before.
Was my school run by hobos? Was the president of my college a hobo? Was I a hobo?
Better yet, what does the word hobo even mean? When did we — all slange users out there — start categorizing people by the unfortunate circumstance they so happen to be in? If this is what’s all the rage, we should have names for all the types of difficulties we humans tend to go through.
If you’re parents are divorced: “house hopper”. If you got declined from the school of your dreams: “All-American reject”. If you lost an important friendship: “bridge breaker”. If someone posted an embarrassing picture of you from last night’s party: “boozer” If you were hurt in a relationship: “defective”.
Now after reading that list of words I invented, you might be thinking to yourself, “Wow, that was incredibly stupid.”
Well let me ask you…. how much more stupid does the word “hobo” sound to you?
