Hey

I was talking to Sandy, the very personable vice-president of Finance, while making my first cup of coffee in the break room at my workplace. Toni, a Director and member of Sandy's staff, walked by and said "Hey".

Sandy replied "Hey" and Toni kept walking to her office; Sandy and I continued our conversation.

I thought to myself, being an old-fashioned kind of guy, that "hey" seems to be a somewhat disrespectful term, especially when directed to someone of importance. A number of years ago, I recalled an expression used by comedians (such as Milton Berle), where they would say "what the hey" (possibly hey was substituted for hell when such language was not allowed on TV.)

Later, at the elevator, Dorothy, a dignified middle-aged lady from the Payroll Department, greeted a friend. You guessed it. "Hey" was both the greeting and response.

I asked Dorothy, who also likes wrestling and the casinos, where she picked up this expression. She explained that greeting someone with a hey "says it all. It's like a special bond or handshake."

When my boys greet their friends, hey is a common greeting, many times followed with a "what's happenin' ". Maybe I can say what's happening once in a while, but hey is so alien to me. Our special greeting in my younger years was "hey man" or "my man," with the man sound dragged out and guttural: my maaaan... Hey was reserved for occasions when we disapproved of some action, like when we saw a kid sitting on our newly polished car. "Hey!" we would shout.

I've had a little time to think about this new kind of greeting. I looked at the options: Hi; Greetings; Hello; Howdy. They are polite but don't have punch, pizzazz, zing, zest, excitement... Hey, I want to be Mr. Excitement (yeah, right, that's got to be some kind of joke). Hey maaan... I want to be cool (maybe if I can somehow return to the 50's and regain my blond, duck-tailed look...).

I think that I'll settle for trying a hey or two with older friends. Then I'll try it out on my boys. If they don't give each other the "Dad is being weird again" look, maybe I'll try it out in the general population. I could experiment with the Wall-Mart greeter and then move on to the pre-teens on my street. Probably, by then, it'll be out-of-date, and I will need to struggle with another culture shift.

Oh, and to all of you who have stood by me through the years, I want to say a really, really big hey!