Whatever happened to Hello or Hi? The standard word used now for a greeting is Hey! It has become universal, at least in the little part of the world that lets me inhabit it. A doc walks by me in the hall way and just says “Hey”. Then he doesn’t look up from his cell phone. I respond by saying, “Dave”. Drives me nuts a little, this “Hey” thing, and initially I rebelled against the lazy word, but it seems it has now become ingrained in my lingo, just like lemming language programmed into robots.

The other day, the answering service sent me a message to call the Emergency Department, to talk to a Dr. “X”, a guy who has talked to me about a thousand times. Yes, we know each other, and so when we were finally patched through, didn’t introduce myself, probably because I assumed he was informed by the staff I was calling back, so I just said, “Hey”.

He laughed, and said, “Sorry I didn’t recognize you’re “Hey”, SR; I’ll have to remember it next time.”

Embarrassed, I apologized for using a lazy word almost automatically, like a robot. But thankfully the days of “What’s happenin” or “What it is” are long gone. I think. But at least those greetings required more than just a one word response, like, “not much man”, or “same old stuff, just a different day.”

So, I started greeting people by saying, “Hi Johnny”, or “What’s goin on Johnny?” and all I got back was, “Hey”. “Not much SR.” But then I realized that was causing confusion in the word salad of the doctor’s lounge, so I have now decided to shake it up a little to see if anyone responds differently when I greet them with new foreign greetings such as, “Hi Randy, good to see you!” Or “Hi Randy, you doin ok?” Yeah, probably won’t work, you know, too much energy put into words. I will however, avoid the “How are you?” greeting that of course, never requires a response and if there is a response, the person who asked it runs away or ignores it.

So instead, I will use these new greetings to see if anyone responds with anything more than a “Hey.”

“Snarly man!”, “Kick it, Rathbone!”, “Bandolissimo!”, “Cut it up dude!” “Blutarsky!”
Or, if it’s a woman,
“Rosie day”, “Nice smile”, “Bonjour”

Hopefully these deviations from the accepted greeting, “Hey” will not result in major trauma to my body, but I’ll take the chance just to shake things up.

SRC