If I hear this phrase one more time today, I’m gonna hurl.  Aside from the bad grammar, what the hell is it you got? Grammar Nazis hate phrases like this and so do I. A big problem is that they get overused so much they start to turn your stomach when you hear them.

It all started at a baseball game I attended this weekend. My granddaughter plays softball, and I love to go watch her play. During the game, I must have heard “You got this” a couple thousand times. On the way home, listening to the radio, I was assaulted with the song, “You Got This.” Then I passed a billboard with that ungrammatical phrase plastered in big letters as it tried to use this awful conglomeration of words to sell me something. I’m not buying.

You can find this phrase everywhere I mentioned above as well as in commercials, videos, movies, comments on social media, and a dozen other places I can’t think of at the moment… Will it never stop?

I realize that our language is in a constant state of flux. It changes all the time with the introduction of new words while some older words are dropped unceremoniously from the language. Every generation has its own phrase they love to vocalize as if it makes them cool to do so. My generation had, “Far out, man.” It tired me so much hearing it repeated so often that I attempted to eviscerate this nasty little creature by saying, “Farm out, man,” in its place. The thought was that this would make “Far out, man,” irrelevant but instead, a number of people around me started copying me. I was suddenly an influencer. I hated it.

The point is that language is supposed to help us communicate with each other. If I said, “Far out man. That pig’s got a big rod,” how many youngsters would know that the hell I’m talking about? I’m sure they would think this statement had something to do with sex, which it doesn’t. That’s the point grammar Nazis are trying to make. If we can’t understand one another, what’s the use of language?

Language used to evolve slowly, like a slow cooked brisket in the smoker. The changes were easily digested and one generation understood what the other said. These days, changes in language have exceeded the speed of fast food and are apparently going to soon be changing at the speed of light. Not even the fastest are able to keep up.

I’m not saying we should go back to the good old days: “Off to ye olde public house for to draught some pints an’ wes an’ vex the saucy barmaid.” (Note: For all you dirty minded coital porcinis- there is nothing improper in the previous statement). I’m also not in favor of our language staying the same. There is only one thing you can count on in life and that is change. Those who stand in the way of all change tend to be rolled over. At the same time, if in a couple of years, we are treated to a sentence like this: “OMG, SMHS, your gonna need another, ‘You got this!’” What the hell does this mean? How are we going to communicate when half the population doesn’t know what the other half is saying?

Please take the pedal off the metal and slow down! You are burning the brisket and confusing the natives.