Bill and Ted teach vocabularity.

My uncle brought my cousins and I to see Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure when I was eight years old, introducing me to two characters who I knew were completely awesome simply by the way they spoke. Years before Wayne's World, Bill and Ted were teaching kids to speak in a manner both impressive to their peers and bewildering to adults. By the time the sequel came out, my friends had turned me on to the smooth musical stylings of heavy metal, the preference of both Bill and Ted, so I was even more enamoured by the duo. I decided to do everything within my power to become as excellent as they were. Everything in my power turned out to be emulating their parlance by speaking in a stoner drawl and adopting their vocabulary, the meaning of their words derived only by the context in which they were used. To my friends in fifth grade, I sounded like a sly badass. To the educated adults around me, I sounded like a damn fool.

One day, a classmate of mine named Keith was telling me about some tragic events that had recently befallen his cousin. Keith was a compulsive liar, and by this time I knew of the fact because I had made up the name of an imaginary rap group that I supposedly listened to all the time, and he had told me that he had a bunch of their tapes. Still, I gave him the benefit of the doubt while listening to his tale. Keith told me about how his cousin had been sitting in his living room one night when a bullet had flown throw the window and into his face. He was still alive, but obviously not doing as well as he could have been on account of having been shot in the face. I seized the opportunity to demonstrate my excellent lexicon.

"Bogus," I said, indicating my displeasure with the notion of his cousin being shot in the face.

"No," said our teacher, who was sitting at her desk and listening in on our conversation. "That's not bogus at all. It's very real."

"Oh," I said, caught off guard. I thought for a moment and then pulled some more of Bill and Ted's vocabulary out of my bag of tricks. "That is non non non non non non non non heinous," I said, adding extra nons because the situation was extra terrible.

"No," said our teacher, "It's very heinous."

"Oh," I said, and then remained silent. From that point on, I only imitated Bill and Ted when safely out of the earshot of adults, who I guessed simply weren't cool enough to know what the hell I was saying.