When Dirtballs Talk Smart

The grimy clothing, the black unlaced high top sneakers, the rotting teeth, the poor hygiene...you know who they are. When coupled with a lack of command of the English language (as in poor grammar), and never seeming to have any sense of right and wrong, we've all encountered people like this.

Which causes me to wonder: does one CHOOSE this kind of ensemble and syntax, or is one born into it?

At high school, we had the dreaded "dirtball hall," which was a hallway tucked away in the southeast corner of the high school, where those that were citizens of "the land of the misfit students" tended to dwell, around the less-than-appealing classrooms of shop or ag. Sometimes the sophomores were relegated to this hallway due to space constraints and not by their own volition. Fortunately, I never was. The lingering aroma of pot tended to waft its ways down the hallway then. Sometimes I wonder: is it still called "dirtball hall?"

What prompts me to write this diatribe is inspired by a recent episode of "Taxicab Confessions" that I saw on HBO. One of the couples on it was a recently married couple with a dog. The woman (the one with the rotting teeth and bad complexion, whose husband still thought she was hot....and I'm thinking he's in need of an appointment to the optometrist) was talking to the cab driver about her trials and tribulations. All the while she was trying to use big words to make her seem like a person one would want to seek advice from. And she used the word "copacetic" I think twice.

I have never used this word. The only people I have ever heard use this word were 1) an ex-girlfriend of my brother who was extremely prone to malapropism (what a dandy SHE was, sometimes besting Archie Bunker's doozies), and 2) people that looked and talked like this woman...all of them trying to look smart.

I don't know. I'm guessing that she didn't graduate from high school. And if she did, I'd like to yank the licenses of those that taught her.

I don't know why it irritated me so much, but with the wealth of information out there to "smarten" one up, I would think that more people would WANT to look into this. Which I guess answers my initial question, in that I think "dirtball" status is a result or product of one's environment rather than choice.

Then again, some people make really BAD fashion and word choice decisions, which makes me more confused than ever!