Language and the generation gap

My sister’s children have forbidden her to say ‘whatev’. On the grounds that she’s over 25. (Quite a lot over 25, actually.) How things have changed. My mother never wanted to take over our slang. She just laughed at us when we called everything ‘far out’. At the time, she was still describing everything as ‘with it’. ...

‘You were cool once, mum,’ says my niece kindly. ‘In the 70s.’