Bro, brah, blah.

Despite the fact that my barber called me “bro” no fewer than twelve times — a word he’s never said in the four years I’ve patronized him — yesterday was fine and productive, a whiff of autumn in the air that had me breaking into brassy musical numbers on the sidewalk, à la Gene Kelly. 

The day went like this: My podiatrist speared a cortisone shot in my foot; it bled like a Tarantino movie, and I marveled at the carnage. I picked up Renata Adler’s great cult novel “Speedboat” at the library. And for lunch I tucked into an elephantine deli sandwich that about made me upchuck thanks to its gut-busting enormity. I felt ill the rest of the day and loved every bite of it. 

I also got a haircut, which brings us back to bro. Besides that it’s the go-to vocabulary of jocks, frat boys, rappers and illiterates who actually think they sound “street,” I don’t know why I loathe that word so much.

I just know that my barber suddenly using/abusing the modified noun out of nowhere was deeply distressing. He even did those lame hip-hop gestures — arms wide, hands contorted in faux-gang signage — as he said “bro” and — yes, it happened — “Yo, bro.”

What was going on? Four years and not once has he stooped to this phony street jive. I’m guessing he’s in his late thirties or early forties, too old for bro, fist-bumps and even, I’m afraid, “dude.” (The less said about “brah” the better.) Married with two young kids, my barber, who I’ll call Miles, doesn’t drink alcohol, so picking this up at a keg-soaked rager is at best categorically implausible. 

(Amusing aside: When Miles did those hip-hop hand gestures he was holding scissors, making him look like Freddy Krueger cackling for the kill. I kind of wish he killed me.)

Of course “bro” is simply short for “brother,” but it sounds like the utterance of monosyllabic dolts. It is largely the verbal currency of very young men and we should cut them some slack until they acquire a full grasp of the English language. Like now.

In the case of Miles, when he says bro with that oblivious grooviness, he’s suddenly reduced to a kid — a bro — himself. Maybe that’s the point, that slang keeps you young at heart. Heaven knows I’ve retained some embarrassing slang in my life, much that’s unprintable in a family blog. 

Miles might be on to something. He’s like a millennial Vanilla Ice, still trying to keep it real even at the risk of fatuity. I might not be a fan of whatever happened to him since I last saw him a month ago, but he’s still a good guy, a mighty barber and a voluble conversationalist (we talk world travel exclusively). It appears, I have to say, that our bromance rolls on.