Radiohead, Crash Test Dummies, and Skibidi Rizz

A brief encounter on the playground with "one of today's youths" reminds me of a simple important truth.

Let’s Be Human is a publication by KHM, exploring faith, the imaginative, and the complexity of being human with other humans. Today’s post is a short story from the weekend, written now that the girls are in bed, my husband is out chasing comets, and I have a few rare moments of quiet.

She came into the playground area wearing black furry gloves—cat paws—and a hodgepodge collage headpiece to match. Her hands were full of small toys. She lumbered like a person whose body had grown overnight without her consent. When we made eye contact, we smiled at each other but said nothing. She discarded her collection on the picnic table and made for the slides. We watched from the swings.

Eventually she joined us. Quiet observation at first, punctuated with awkwardly loud bursts of laughter as my tinies celebrated swinging super high or tried to eat acorns picked off the ground. The laughs slowly turned into conversation—which, once it started going, had a hard time stopping.

“I’m not one of those fake Nirvana fans,” was the first thing she said to me. “You know, like those people who say they know them or wear the shirt but can’t even name one song.” She then named five songs.

“I had friends in school who played guitar and drums,” I said. “They played a lot of Nirvana.”

“Do you know Radiohead?”

“I’ve definitely heard of them.”

“Do you know Jonny Greenwood? He plays guitar. Jonny Greenwood!! I know all the rock bands. My shoes are Crash Test Dummies. Do you know them?”

“Not very well.”

“They’re great.” She proceeds to shout-sing one of their songs, just a single line, containing a name I now can’t remember. “I have a crash test dummy. It’s over there. I’ll show you!”

This continued for the next forty-five minutes. The young lady schooled me in rock band lore and lyrics. We discovered we both did and love art, although she has certainly used more AI character generation software than I even knew existed. She likes to draw people and Jonny Greenwood!! and fantasy characters like the cat she was pseudo-cosplaying that day.

“Do you know skibidi?”

Interestingly enough, I kind of did, thanks to this hilariously delightful news piece (you’re welcome).

“How about rizz? Gyat? If I tell you—” and she proceeded to tell a story in 85% Gen Z slang.

I blinked a few times and then said, “Honestly, I’m not sure I caught all of that, but I think I mostly understood what you said.”

“What do you think I said?”

“You said that the guy and girl liked each other but then the girl realized he was a jerk and so they’re not friends anymore now?”

She was ecstatic because, somehow, I was actually right.

Her grandmother interrupted our conversation to tell us that they needed to leave in about 15 minutes. Turned out they were on the same “get home to make supper” schedule we were.

A few more moments of swinging and then she said, “Do you know what kind of kids at school I hate the most?”

“Who’s that?” I answered.

“The kids who get all up in your face and cuss you out for no reason.”

“Yeah, that’s not very nice at all.”

“Yeah. I don’t hang out with them. I’m a weirdo. I hang out with the weird kids. We’re the scene(??) group. I hang out with the scene kids. We draw and talk about weird stuff.”

I nodded, still pushing my one-year-old, who was now practically sedate in her swing. “I was in band in school, so I was a band nerd. Weirdos are the coolest people.”

“Yeah.”

Before long, it was time to go. Finding a way to put a pin in our pause-less conversation was hard, but I did my best.

“Well, I have to go home and make sure these girls get dinner. It was very nice talking with you. I hope when you’re back at school, you have fun with all your weird friends. I’m glad you have people around you who are into the same stuff as you and have your back. That’s a real gift. And I hope you keep doing your art. You never know what you can make of that. Keep it up.”

“Thank you,” she said.

And we parted ways.

---

Later that evening, after the girls were down and supper was done and Hub and I were finishing up the dishes, I recounted our conversation to him, especially those final words. There was something about the way she said them that really struck me, and sticks with me even now.

Everything else we’d discussed—her musical interests, our shared artistic tendencies, AI and “cringey edits” and Gen Z codewords—had been imbued with a certain frantic energy and scattered-ness, a hallmark of the middle school mind constantly bopping from one thing to the next without pause (and, as often critiqued by the surrounding adults, without thought).

Her “thank you” was different. It was quiet. Slower. To me, what it really said was, “Thank you for seeing me.”

I hear it a lot from adults around me. “I just don’t understand the young people these days!!” With all their crazy words and fast-fading fads and trends on TikTok. Ay yi yi, “those young people.” There are entire books and YouTube channels working so hard to help adults, particularly parents and grandparents, understand the youths of today. They bemoan the gap their lack of understanding supposedly creates, resigning themselves to never being able to relate to their children ever again.

(And don’t get me wrong—it’s probably a good idea to know how to decode things and keep an eye on what your middle schooler is up to because the world is just as mad as it was 15, 20 years ago and even more accessible.)

But what I found in my conversation with this young lady is that I could connect with her, even without comprehending or personally relating to half of what she talked about. I did relate to her, not by pretending to be hip with the slang, but by being honest about my own limitations. I showed interest in what she loved. I didn’t “get” everything she got, but I got her.

Maybe understanding young people is not about comprehending. Maybe it’s just about being an adult who swings alongside them and takes the time to listen to every word they say.

— khm —