Piped
I learned a new way to say “drunk” today! My new landlady, who was born in Cuba but raised in West Hollywood, was telling me the amusing story of her elderly mother partying on a cruise. She said, “Oh, she was just piped! Just piped! I said Ma, you’re not used to rum, you’re gonna get piped, and she was!”
This was a new one for me. I’ve heard of people being wasted, blasted, smashed, crocked, blitzed, and snockered, but never piped.
I asked her whether that was slang specific to this area and she paused to think it over. “Well, that’s what we said in high school, and I went to school here, so…” Of course, that was back in the 80s. Not to give her age away or anything. But I’m operating now on the assumption that “piped” is a local West Hollywood thing.
Now I’m trying to figure it out: why piped? At first I thought piped as in music. That’s my Navy background at work. When the Commanding Officer came aboard the ship every morning, the bo’sun would pipe them aboard, that is, give a long blast on the bo’sun’s whistle and announced over the 1MC, “USS Emory S. Land, arriving.”
But now that I look at the other slang terms for “drunk,” I’m struck—pun intended—by how violent they are. Smashed! Blitzed! Wasted! Now I’m thinking piped like: hit over the head by a lead pipe. Because that’s kind of what it feels like. Well, the next day, anyway.
So, having figured that out to my satisfaction, I now must solve the mystery of how the East Coast “anyhoo” caught on here in Hollywood. Because she says that too, and I am fairly certain it’s about as native to California as hummus.
