Every kid has a “tribe”, a close circle of friends who share similar culture. The tribal uniform is easily recognized and the language contains words which are used and overused by the group. I recently encountered two words that I had not heard since my teenage days.
My friends were no different. We played ball, hung out on the corner, stole watermelons from the A&P and pears from the neighbors tree. We swore like Marines. And, we had our vernacular which included two interesting words.
The first word, “Dolt” came to us by way of Mrs. Gilardi, the French teacher. One day in the beginning of Freshman year,she dropped a vase, smashing it to pieces. “DOLT!”, she shouted. Although the class did not not have any understanding of French, we were convinced that it was a swear word.
“DOLT!” We substituted it for almost any vulgarity we wished to utter (using it as both a noun and a verb, e.g. “You’re a Dolt!” and “Dolt Off!” It found its way into almost every conversation. It was the salt in our verbal culinary.
Then, one day, in almost a Inigo Montonya manner, she said, “Dolt means ‘fool’. We were stunned; surely it had to be more powerful, more cutting, more insulting than that. We got a French dictionary and checked. There it was. Of course, she was right. We teetered for a moment, and then we righted ourselves. “We’re a bunch of dolts. Let’s get the dolt out of here.”
My Thoughts and the Thoughts of Others 