Boo!

(One more of the topics that rambled through my mind as I was walking the other morning.)

As a high school teacher in the heart of the city, most of the kids didn’t look much like me. Still, in spite of different ethnicities, big spans of age, and cultural disparities you find connections as the year wears on. On more than one occasion, someone would greet me with, “Hey Boo! How ya doing, Miss?” (Married or not, young or old, we female teachers were usually addressed as ‘Miss.’)

Had they watched a steady diet of old Yogi Bear reruns filled with his sidekick BooBoo?  Was this a racist reference to my pale skin and tendency to burn?

 I never really knew what they meant, but finally decided it wasn’t an insult.  The other day this memory came back to me and I finally looked it up.

     One source said that it harks back to the French word ‘beau,’ and the French colonization of the Caribbean islands, where the word worked its way into the Afro-Caribbean language. This made sense to me, since I taught a fair number of Jamaican kids and others from various islands. In today’s urban slang, it’s often used between friends and family members, the same way you might call someone ‘honey.’ So apparently, it’s a term of endearment.

     At the time I had a feeling it wasn’t very dignified, and I tried to discourage it, but I still found it endearing.