THIS is the possibility I’d suggest the OP focus on. The first thing that popped into my mind was car culture, as opposed to drug culture. And a teen posted in this thread that was their first impression, so obviously “drag” WRT crusing in cars is still being used by kids.
If you read it that way though, it makes it seem like she was racing against her boyfriend.
While we’re giving our impressions, the sentence seems clearly sexual to me. “Dragging” makes me think of oral sex, though I’m no more privy to teen slang than anyone else.
Back in my day, we would do some kind of sexual play that involved putting the naughty bits up against each other and making rocking motions, as if having sex, but with clothes on. We called that “scrogging.”
This is what I first thought of when I read the OP. “Dragging” as another word for “scrogging.”
My first guess was sex, too. I’ve never heard “dragging” as meaning screwing, but kids create a new euphemism for sex every month, so that’s a pretty reasonable guess.
Actually, that’s what I was thinking. As in “drag one’s balls across her face”. Sounds reasonible.
From http://freaky_freya.tripod.com/Drunktionary/C-D.html:
Dragged - Northeastern college slang. A “dragger” is somebody who gets drunk frequently and has to be dragged back to one’s room.
So… perhaps she had to be dragged, or maybe she did the dragging.
My first impression was sex, and then cars.
I regularly bandy about drug slang with lots of people and have never, ever heard “dragged” used to refer to drugs in any way.
Around here, we called that “dry-docking”. Usually the clothing remained on.
Yeah, but slang can also be pretty insular. It’s entirely possible that in her group of friends, it means something different than the generally accepted term. Given that we’re all struggling to come up with something that makes sense, I think this is pretty likely.
I’m inclined to think that it’s car culture, as opposed to drug culture. But then, I’m 23: totally out of the loop.
She’s not listening to your Tommy James albums, is she?
I read this as she was in a car with her boyfriend while he was racing another vehicle. “Drag” racing.
I asked my 14 y/o neice and my girlfriend’s 16 y/o daughter how they would interpret “dragging with” and they immediatly said car racing. They pointed out that in certain circles “dragging” is still considered quite the cool thing to do on a saturday night. They threw in “to take a drag” as cigarette smoking but had never heard “dragging with” as smoking with someone.
So thats the best I can offer.
Man, it just doesn’t seem right that it has been 15 years since I could call myself a teenager…
I had consider the possibility that this was very much local jargon. If it is some sort of drug slang, it’s gotta be very localized. Not only was I unable to find this being used in a drug context in the Google Usenet archives of the drug newsgroups, I frequent a number of recreational drug sites. Heck, my 2 websites in fact are about certain drug (dextromethorphan, a/k/a DXM.) Thus this term can’t be in wide use. However, teenagers are very inventive when it comes to slang terms.
I’m still leaning in the direction this is car culture slang. Dragged in that context has been used for many decades. Some sort of sexual slang is certainly possible. However, I’m not finding any instances of “drag with” or “dragged with” being used to describe any sexual behavior.
Perhaps it’s a made-up word between her and her friend. My friends and I did this as teenagers–sometimes out of shyness (we didn’t want to discuss boys we liked openly, so we made up code words… yeah, we were cool! heh) and sometimes to hide things from our parents. Sometimes we had our own words just due to the amount of time we spent together. You know how it is with teenaged girls!
I should have given these details to begin with:
She’s not into drugs (I at least know that much) and even mentioned in her note that others in her school smoke pot, but she doesn’t.
She’s not into cars and the context of drag racing doesn’t ring true at all.
Most importantly, we just moved back from the Caribbean and she was writing this note to a friend there. She took on the local slang there and, most probably, “dragging” is a Caribbean (possibly originally British?) term; not an American one.
I wrote to a few friends down there to see what they come up with and will let you know.
As you read it, you realized she would not be happy if you saw it?
Why?
Were there other, blatant mentions of dangerous behavior or disobedience that would have serious consequences?
If so, you should confront her about it, by all means, and get the “translation” firsthand. Because time is of the essence.
If, on the other hand, you realized she’d be unhappy solely because you were going through her things, and there’s nothing else in the note to cause concern, maybe you should burn the note and act as if it never existed. You’ll have plenty of time to figure out what “dragged” means without ruining her trust.
First, let me tell you that a friend from the Caribbean informed me that “dragging” means “french kissing.” This is something that, in recent years, has grossed my daughter out entirely, but it’s funny how these attitudes change…
And now, to respond to “Dr. Phil” here… she left the note out where I found it while I was cleaning up - I wasn’t “going through her things.”
Not that I don’t do some browsing in her room. Do you have teenagers? If so, I would hope you’re doing at least a little light snooping.
There were no blatant mentions in her note of dangerous behavior and only flirtations with disobedience that were probably more brag than fact (kind of: see-how-free-and-wild-middle-school-in-the-US-is!). She’s a great kid - the best. I trust her implicitly. But she has become incredibly private about her life, which is normal at her age.
Sex education in a normal, informal, healthy way has gone on in our house since my kids were learning to talk. But certain information/education is not relevant to them (you can tell because they put their fingers in their ears and make retching sounds) until they reach certain stages of development. So sometimes parents have to be (should be, I should say) “vigilant,” if not prying, to find out what’s going on. Confronting doesn’t work. Certainly if I found a crack pipe in her room, I would confront. But that’s not what we’re talking about here.
I am delighted with her boyfriend. She’s known him since she was in second grade; he’s smart, curious about the world, athletic and a good friend, besides being a romantic interest. If she’s “dragging” with him, it’s earlier than I did that (she’s 13), but I’m just glad it doesn’t mean oral sex or S&M.
Easy, easy, there.
I’m not at all suggesting that your authority ends at her doorjamb, and I apologize if it came out that way.
All I was trying to say was, “If one ambiguous phrase in a note turned up by snooping/vigilance/parenting (without applying negative connotations to any of those) is the only issue here, then maybe it’s best to let this one slide rather than let the stay-the-hell-out-of-my-room bomb explode over it.” Don’t want her hackles up and her hiding places to grow more complex over nothing.
Sooner or later, you might be forced to play the “My house, I go where I want, you have no expectation of privacy here” card. I’m just saying maybe this isn’t the time.
Back to the subject at hand, at least it’s just kissing.
Exactamente. Still, I needed to know what it meant to see if I could just drop it. My translation search online (before I went to a real live source) would have been somewhat comical, if we weren’t talking about my going-on-13 daughter :eek:
Here’s what I found in a search of slang in the UK and the Caribbean:
SEARCH RESULTS total results for drag
…drag Noun. 1. Dressing in the opposite sexes clothes. drag queen Noun. A male homosexual who dresses in women’s clothes and affecting extreme effeminate mannerisms. drain the main vein Vrb phrs…
http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/d.htm
…Noun. A drag on a cigarette. toley
Noun. A lump of excrement. Also spelt toly and tolli. [Orig. Scottish] tom
Noun. 1. A prostitute. A London term nationally known due to its use on police dramas such as The Bill. 2…
Verb: drag
To tie a person to the back bumper of a truck and pull them through the streets.
God I hate that kid, I’m gonna drag him.
One definition I was hoping to find was trolling for or snagging salmon. I would love it if somebody in the family besides me was interested in fishing!
Looks like you probably figured out the answer. And if your daughter is going on 13, if her boyfriend is close to her age I doubt that my suspicion this had to do with car culture makes sense. In that context: “___, my boyfriend, is the first one I ever dragged with.” would likely mean that she was a passenger in the car with her boyfriend as the driver. If her boyfriend is too young to have a driver’s license, this rules out “dragging” with him.