Retire "go"

Listened in on an adolescent conversation lately? "So I go, 'Are you nuts?' And he goes, 'No, I'm not.' And then I go, 'You totally are.' And then he, like, storms out."

It grates on the ears, but it's teenspeak and they're entitled to it. However, teenspeak is unattractive in a corporate office, and unfortunately too many people inhabiting those offices today still speak as if they're on their way to home room instead of to a business meeting.

When my kids were young, they could speak any way they wanted with their friends, but inside our home, "go" as a substitute for "said" was banished. They hated it, but now that they're grown people, they sound like adults, not as if they have a case of arrested development. I think I did something right. Try it. Your children won't thank you now, but they might in ten years.