The English Language...You Can Use it Too

I feel like I'm a fairly sympathetic person. I try to understand the lives people lead, and why they do certain things. Sometimes I even go as far as to give a person the benefit of the doubt, although I admit, it is sometimes rare. Which brings me to my latest frustration. Sometimes the use of a particular word, or the way someone uses the word will just drive me into a frenzy. Sometimes when the word "chatted" is used repeatedly, I get very irritated. I'm weird, I know.

Its not that the words themselves bother me, its when they are used exclusively with no synonym in sight that I get bothered. Take today for instance. I was working with this very nice lady, who seemed to be intelligent enough and well spoken enough to engage in a conversation (my assessment skills must have fallen by the wayside.) Over the course of our conversation, said lady used the phrase, "and I was like woooow" repeatedly in the conversation. And I don't want to use the word repeatedly to confuse the reader into thinking that it was used 5 times in the course of our 25 minute car ride. I don't even want to trick the reader into thinking I'm using the word "repeatedly" to say she said the phrase 10 times over the course of a 25 minute car ride. She said the phrase LITERALLY 21 times ( I know because I counted....no seriously, at one point I thought I was caught because I used the ever so effective method of finger counting like a 5 year old, as if counting in my head was out of the question.) Anywho, she used the phrase almost once a minute, "and I was like woooow."

Part of me was just plain amazed at how she used that simple phrase to express herself in a variety of different situations:

Amazement: "and I was like wooooow"

Fear: "and I was like wooooow"

Anger: "and I was like woooow"

Confusion: "and I was like woooow"

And I was like wow: "and I was like wooooow"

Atleast she used it correctly once.