Off the Cuff: Viva va-va-voom, you finally made it!

It's official. Va-va-voom is a word according to the Oxford Concise English Dictionary. And, man, has it been around for a while. According to reports, it's Thierry Henry's Renault ad that tipped the balance and pushed the word to its exalted status, but I like to think the rest of us contributed our bit.

As children, we used to watch re-runs of a TV show called "Happy Days". (Yes, they did have shows with names like that, way back then.) "Happy Days" was a kind of forerunner of today's "Friends", but with more fleshed out characters.

It revolved around an ice-cream parlour with a jukebox frequented by a clique of high-school students, much like Jughead's haven in Archie comics.

Of all its characters, without doubt, the most memorable was "The Fonz", a very cool, older guy, who rode a bike, was always in a black leather jacket, had unbelievable, gravity-defying hair and walked the "walk".

He didn't talk much, but top of his limited vocabulary was "va-va-va-voom", and there was a time when we all "va-va-voomed" in imitation of Fonzie.

We'd sit demurely on the school bus, and as the driver revved the engine at each stop, us "Fonzettes" would jump up and walk the "walk" up and down the aisle in tribute, all the time "va-va-vooming". There was even an arm movement to accompany the routine.

Disturbing the lovebirds

The Fonzettes, alternatively known as the Wacky Packys, would even sneak up on unsuspecting couples stealing a private moment between parked school buses and slam them with a va-va-voom, again with the arm movement. Sometimes, we were ignored in the face of love's intensity, but most times we were chased right up to our classrooms.

Till recently, the Fonzettes met in the "office" of the little girls room and sorted out the business of gossip, gossip and more gossip just the way the Fonz used to. Many issues of the day, confrontations and schemes took place there before we va-va-voomed our way out to face the world.

Come high school, the guys used to gather in clusters in hallways, back-slap each other and giggle like all adolescent males and out came the "va-va-voom" each time the cute chick passed by. Immediately followed more giggling.

In college, young women waited patiently for their transport at shaded bus-stops. Young men drove by on motorbikes or trendy little cars with loud music. When the young women were of particular interest, the bikes and cars seemed to make more trips, back and forth along the same road, and their engines were deafening.

Offering a drop

Eventually, the vehicles would slow and stop just beside the bus-stop, and the drivers would start a conversation and maybe offer to take the young ladies to their destination.

The young ladies would then promptly turn them down. Those that hadn't worked up the guts would have to settle for stopping some distance away and just revving the engine. Va-va-voom was taken to a different level.

You would think that things would change in adulthood, but boys will be boys, even at 40. Only the settings have changed. Instead of crowded, noisy, high school hallways, the scenes have transformed to busy, quiet workplaces.

The boys are now older, but they still stand around and backslap each other on occasion. It's just that when the cute chick passes by, the va-va-voom is silent and unspoken, but still very much alive in their eyes.

Yep, va-va-voom's come a long way, and I don't see why Thierry Henry gets all the credit.