When Knowing Becomes Not Knowing and Not Knowing Becomes Reality: Pre-Office Idiots, Cyber Creeps & Texting Cougars

Tweet tweet.

@Obnoxioustweeter1: Where you at? 

@Obnoxioustweeter2: (in reply to Obnoxioustweeter1): My spot wit @anotherobnoxioustweeter. Where yue at? 

Disclaimer: This twitter conversation is 100% real, however the twitter names have been changed to names deemed more appropriate.

There is so much I could comment on here, but for the sake of subject matter, lets concentrate on "where you at?".

My mind takes me back to an English lesson in eighth grade on prepositions. My teacher had made a big, red, cut-out dog house and a little, black, cut-out dog to go with it. We were supposed to create and demonstrate sentences with the model. The sentence was "The dog went __________ her dog house. The blank was supposed to be filled in by prepositions (around, over, under, etc.). More important than the dog's whereabouts though, that lesson made me forever remember that you are NEVER SUPPOSED TO END A SENTENCE WITH A PREPOSITION. Guess what other word is a preposition? Yes! At is a preposition and it is NOT an exception.

(Side note, before you go all crazy judgemental on my ass, I did learn about prepositions long before eighth grade. My school district was the kind that liked to keep hammering like grammar lessons into your skull until you graduated.)

Continued: Not an exception, I say. But, people act as though it is. Jennifer Hudson even performed a new song last week on American Idol called.....WHERE YOU AT? Cringe. I died a little inside each time she wailed those words and as if the chorus repeating two thousand times wasn't enough, the back up singers were softly repeating the phrase during the versus too. It felt like a bad, schizophrenic dream that I couldn't wake up from. The vocals were great, but the words turned a good song into torture.

Before I go on, I'm going to acknowledge that I believe some of you use this expression as slang. However in most cases, slang is used to shorten words or phrases and in this instance, I just don't feel that it makes sense. "Where you at" has the same number of words as it's grammatically correct equivalent "Where are you".

Even better is the "Where you been at?". Where have you been is also a sentence constructed of four words.

Some even use "at" at the end of sentences where it is not even taking the place of a correct word. "Where's the stapler at?". I remember my FIRST GRADE teacher telling a student that she didn't need to add the word at to the end of such sentences. It's an EXTRA word! It makes the sentence LONGER! It takes up MORE characters on twitter!

Sometimes there is a fine line between knowing and not knowing and this is what I see happening here. Some of you are smart. Some of you know sentences like these aren't grammatically correct, but you use them anyway. Maybe because your friends do, maybe because you think you have to, but the rest of you really have no idea. I urge you to at least know the difference because if not, when you grow up and have to put on your big girl/boy pants, you will become the office idiot, cyber creep and/or texting cougar. Food for thought, kids.