K is for kthxbai

A few years ago, I'd recruited a bunch of fresh grads in my team. I hung out with them quite a bit in the beginning (welcome lunch, orientation, teaching the ropes, status update meetings, etc.) but contrary to popular belief, hanging out with them did not make me feel younger. If anything, I felt old. Even though I thought I knew their lingo, I didn't. Apparently OMG and LOL were so passé, and ZOMG and kthxbai were in.

When I first came across 'kthxbai', I had no clue what it was. It looked like Kantabai, but obviously a bunch of Singaporean-Chinese fresh grads would not be talking about Kantabai. So I turned to Google. Apparently it is 'the internet bastardization of "OK, thank you, goodbye" and is a hasty way to tell someone goodbye, especially if you do not want to talk to them'.

Wow. Okay.

One of them told me how she sent a very long polite email to an unreasonable client, but that "the essence of the email was basically, you know, kthxbai".

I was amazed. Normally, I get annoyed to see stuff like 'c u' or 'call mi' or 'luv da color'. But this 'kthxbai' really intrigued me. I wasn't even sure I knew how to use it properly. So I never really did. And then I kind of forgot about it.

Until last Saturday, when another kid reminded me how to use it.

I'd taken Xena to an Easter party that had a lot of children's activities. Easter egg sculpting and painting, colouring bunny pictures, pick-up sticks, etc. Xena thoroughly enjoyed the egg-painting and wanted to colour the bunnies next. So we headed to the booth and got the picture and the crayons. She sat on a chair and looked around at all the other kids. They were all much older than her and busy colouring. Xena picked up a few crayons and asked me which she should use for which parts of the picture. We were examining the crayons and discussing when the lady manning the booth gave me a dirty look and said quite loudly, "Don't help her, can? You should let her do it by herself."

I was a bit taken aback because we were just talking about the colours and it was not like I was doing the actual colouring on behalf of Xena. Also, it was just a party, everyone was having fun, there was no need to be so teacher-like and start scolding parents. But I didn't want to be rude, so I just nodded my head.

The next thing I knew, Xena had pushed the piece of paper back towards the lady with a "I don't want to colour anymore."

I didn't know how to react at this supposed standing-up-for-mommy stance of hers, but we just gathered our things and walked away. The lady was gaping, and even made an attempt to stop us.

But our decision was final.

It was kthxbai.