I’m 100% guilty of being an exaggerator to get my point across in conversation. Even just then in that sentence I exaggerated by saying “100%.” I don’t have the actual stats, but hey, it kind of verbally underlines and bolds it, don’t ya think?

So I couldn’t help but giggle at the SNL skit last weekend detailing the conversations of millennial interns. If you haven’t watched it yet, please do so. It will bring your dismal, rainy Wednesday up a notch. But whilst watching and laughing and saying, “oh interns,” I stopped dead in my tracks and thought to myself, “I LITERALLY say some of this stuff … holy shit I JUST DID IT. ACK!”

Millenials, right? Wrong. This kind of “speech” (if that is what we are calling it) runs across a vast number of ages. And after much thought and contemplation, I believe it is because we have all been hypnotized by reality shows like the Hills, Laguna Beach, and basically anything on Bravo and E!

I mean the Kardashians alone … hello? Have you HEARD them? Long drawn out vooooooooowels, lots of “EW.” and calling each other ridiculous names like “slores” (which, true story I have absolutely adopted that shit into my vocabulary … it’s too good not to), have trickled their way into every day conversation making us all think it is okay, when, in real reality, it is not.

Should we all go back to the Eliza Doolittle school of speech? Instead of “the rain in Spain,” nonsense, Professor Henry Higgins would sit us all down and attempt to get us to say a sentence without the word “literally” in it … because it makes no sense. You’re talking and telling a story. It’s not “figuratively” happening. So … then it must be literal. And by you telling me it is literally happening seems kind of repetitive, right? Right.

For the love of God, we need to stop pretending we are being filmed for a reality show as we sit at a bar and gab to our girlfriends about how we will, “LITERALLY die if we ever see that scumbags face ever again.” I’m guilty of it. Sometimes I hear myself talking after a few cocktails and I have this ache in my stomach for fear of what the quaint little couple next to me is thinking as I morph into my Kourtney Kardashian alter ego. Maybe I just shouldn’t give a shit, who knows.

All I’m saying is, hats off to SNL for making light of something most girls are guilty of. If you pride yourself on your proper and perfect English speech, then good for you, Harvard grad, here’s a cookie. For the rest of us average millennials, let’s make a conscious effort to remove these from our vocabulary today. I wish I could shock you every time you said, “LITERALLY” or “I DIIIIIIIIIIIE,” but alas, I fear that is drastically illegal.

Class is in session. Lesson 1: Things we should no longer be saying … ahem:

1. Literally

2. OH MY GOD :::fill in blank:::

3. I can’t even

4.I literally … just cannot

5. Exaggerations regarding the weather … Ex: It’s like 500 degrees in here, I’m melting (no it’s not, it’s a balmy 78 and you will live)

6. Don’t even

7. Exaggerations regarding timing … Ex: Uuuggghhh, I’ve been waiting for you for like a million trillion years (you would be dead if that was LITERALLY true. Stop it.)

8. Exaggerations about hunger … Ex: My stomach is literally eating itself, I’m going to pass out and die. (It isn’t scientifically possible to happen in one day. Calm down and eat a Kind bar.)

9. Really? REALLY?

10. EW, Seriously? EW.