The Non-Ironic Use of Groovy

Zeitgeisters,

Very occasionally this blog employs a smattering of ironic humour. You may have noticed. Or maybe you don’t think about this blog too often. Hold on. I need a moment... okay…

This idea of saying one thing but meaning its opposite can get you into trouble. I once taught writing to a class of adult students and they gave me this feedback, “We actually don’t know if you’re joking or not most of the time.” (Watto, if you’re reading this, remember Mr Trivia is not the guy you employ).

Which leads me to this.

When I was a kid we watched THE BRADY BUNCH. And by we, I mean my Demographic Peer Group – which was the name of the gang I rolled with, but more on that another time. Even at our young age, we knew that THE BRADY BUNCH was an old show and that meant all their attitudes, clothes and slang were ridiculous. Greg Brady said ‘groovy’ which made it a terrible hippy word from the ‘sixties.

Outside of entertainer Sammy Davis Jnr, the world was a Groovy-Free Zone from about 1977 onward. Sometime in the early 1990s, people began using the term ironically; certainly every time I said it, I meant that whatever I was commenting on, was the opposite of ‘groovy’.

But recently, that all changed. I was walking out of a café on Stirling Street, Perth, and I almost ran into a girl wearing a black leather belt which was studded with silver bullets (not real bullets and not real silver, but you get it.) You may be sitting in front of the computer readjusting your bullet belt for all I know, but I hadn’t seen anything like that since I was six-years-old and hung my cap gun off something very similar.

I looked at this girl’s belt as she walked off and had a weird flashback to being six when I thought nothing sounder cooler than me making ricocheting bullet-sounds with my mouth. Thankfully, I wasn’t standing there in Stirling Street going, “Pow! Ping!”. I did something weirder. I said aloud to myself, in the street, “groovy belt.” And I meant it 100%.

I have become a man who says ‘groovy’. As well as a “chicks and ammo” dude as well, apparently, but one crisis at a time.

I think I can get away with the non-ironic use of “groovy” – but can I? Has the pop culture wheel turned enough so that "groovy" is groovy again?

Elevate the Insignificant

Mr Trivia