Gator Gab

Some English teachers labor under the illusion that college students speak English. Dr. Lalia Phipps Boone of the University of Florida knows better: she keeps her ears open outside the classroom. In American Speech she records the exotic gab used by her students when they stop talking for professorial consumption.

This year superior students held in high regard are four-pointers and curve killers; those who merely get by are egg heads, Popular girls are queens; unpopular ones are roaches--especially if they are also D.D.P.s (damn door pushers, given to hugging the far side of the convertible's front seat). Other automotive terms apply to a wheel's satellites--medium-sized campus lights are spokes and hub caps.

Show-off lads who hurtle their old Mercs around too screechingly (turning on the afterburners) are High-school Harrys. Well-dressed and popular men are cool dads and hard cats. But the answer to every coed's prayer is a king or snow job. Many a coed, dating up a storm, gets snowed (or sewed) for an infatuated spell called snow time (if her king is too cool, she may have to shovel out the snow). During this romance, only a bad-mannered gnome or mullet would try to hook a snake (ask for a date with the snow king's queen). But should some crude dormitory barbarian crack this campus canon, the dethroned king has been shafted or jabbed, barbed by the purple shaft or the maroon harpoon. In despair he feels clanked or clutched. He has a similar feeling if a girl merely keeps him in the club (dates many boys and favors none), though it is only fair to add that such girls often end up clawing the wall ("whatever that means," Dr. Boone says delicately).

If a boy can find no girl to go a la bois (parking), he may sop (drink) and get sobe (drunk). But a clanked lad sometimes decides to cooperate with the Vatican (the Administration building). He turns from a crip (easy course) and throws himself into cemetery working (tough studying). After hard work, his grades should be boxed, racked or knocked. But if he is still not sure whether he can grease (just pass), he may turn rider (cribber). He finds a pony to ride or gets a cheat sheet and then, all saddled up, feels ready to face even Flunkenstein, the prof's IBM grading machine.

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