{"id":37231,"date":"2023-02-04T00:01:12","date_gmt":"2023-02-04T08:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=37231"},"modified":"2026-06-06T06:26:27","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T06:26:27","slug":"its-not-my-jam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/its-not-my-jam\/","title":{"rendered":"‘It’s Not My Jam’ — Is Not My Jam. Of Course, It Isn’t. I’m 81 Years Old, for Heaven’s Sake"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"community-of-writers\"
Writers gathered for an author panel at Community of Writers workshops in the Sierra, 2022.\u00a0 (COW is<\/em> my jam.) Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

‘It’s not my jam.’ I heard that idiom for the first time a couple months ago, and I’ve made up my mind — it’s not my jam.<\/p>\n

When I first heard that figure of speech, I was alarmed (for a nanosecond) because it fell, oh-so-casually, from the lips of someone I admired (make that envied) — a Bay Area writer who publishes and teaches and is privy to the innermost goings-on of the Bay Area writing world.<\/p>\n

The setting was a sidewalk table at a jam-packed restaurant in San Francisco’s Mission District. Several of us were ordering dishes to share. For the aforementioned writer, the mushrooms — or was it the shrimp bits? — were “not my jam.”<\/p>\n

With that, there in the high-energy bustle of Mission Street, a gloomy Fear of Missing Out settled over me. People in the know were moving on to ‘It’s not my jam’ and I was still happy with ‘It’s not my cup of tea.’<\/p>\n

Making 21st-century Century Hay<\/strong><\/h5>\n

I fretted. Was American culture leaving my 81-year-old self behind? Are the up-and-coming, youth-y people — Gen Xers, Millennials, Gen Zers — making the 21st-century cultural hay without me?<\/p>\n

(Just so you know, the expression ‘It’s not my jam’ is a musical, not a culinary, term. It’s been around for a while but got a boost back in 2006 when a video of CheckOne2<\/a> went viral with its song “That’s My Jam.” Another boost came in 2021 with the Jimmy Fallon game show That’s My Jam<\/em>.<\/p>\n

(Exactly when the expression found its way into Bay Area literary circles I don’t know. I wasn’t there to witness its arrival.)<\/p>\n

Not long after the writer and the shrimp bits incident, my daughter came north for Thanksgiving with her husband and a friend. There, in\u00a0 my kitchen, surrounded by her millennial pals, I heard those same words fall from my daughter’s lips.<\/p>\n

With that it became clear to me — ‘It’s not my jam’ was an up-and-coming turn of phrase on its way to becoming the next ‘awesome’ or ‘no problem.’<\/p>\n

‘Awesome.’ ‘No problem.’ <\/strong><\/h5>\n

‘Awesome.’ ‘No problem.’\u00a0Both of those expressions have been around for decades, as you’ve probably noticed. When my children were reaching adulthood, I stood by as the mid-century ‘cool’ gave way to the millennial ‘awesome’ — a term that still strikes me as over the top.<\/p>\n

Yes, the Grand Canyon is awesome — but is a pumpkin spice latte?<\/p>\n

I decided to stick with ‘cool’ and let the younger generation have at it with ‘awesome.’<\/p>\n

Same goes for ‘No problem,’ which seems to have replaced ‘You’re welcome’ as the expected response to a\u00a0 ‘Thank you.’<\/p>\n

‘No problem’ bothers me. It has a way of implying that the groceries I just bought are indeed a problem for the bagger at the check-out counter. He’ll bag my groceries anyway, “No problem.”<\/p>\n

‘No problem’ feels transactional and stingy. Good old ‘you’re welcome,’ on the other hand, has — had? — a generous feel to it, a fitting bookend to a thoughtful ‘Thank you.’<\/p>\n

As for my daughter and her jam, I can’t recall whether it was a bottle of sauvignon blanc or a TV series on Netflix that was not her jam that night.<\/p>\n

‘It’s Not My Jam’ — My Idiom? Or Someone Else’s?<\/strong><\/h5>\n

More to the point, I had now heard this new — to me — idiom twice over. Did that mean I could now claim it as my own and start tossing it around at sidewalk restaurants in the Mission District? Could I ditch ‘not my cup of tea’ and plug in ‘not my jam’ and tell myself I was keeping up with the times?<\/p>\n

Or, would I rather stay put and carry on as a living, breathing human archive of the old timey expressions of my 20th-century youth? Do I stick to my rickety old guns and insist on tea when everyone else is opting for jam?<\/p>\n

I’ve put in 81 years on this planet. I’m not young anymore. But it seems I still have life choices to make.<\/p>\n

In which case, I’ll have the tea. For now.<\/p>\n

More stories about the writing life at “Writing Tips From a Famous Author: I Put My Best Socks on to Get Them.”<\/a>\u00a0 Also, “A Book of Essays From Cartoonist Cathy Guisewite. Did She Write It, Or Did I?”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"community-of-writers\"<\/a><\/p>\n

People in the know were saying, ‘It’s not my jam.’ A product of the 20th century, I was sticking to, ‘It’s not my cup of tea.’\u00a0 Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49129,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,50],"tags":[103,2659,146,2660,2661,2662,82],"class_list":["post-37231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","category-on-writing-reading","tag-aging","tag-choices","tag-christina","tag-idioms","tag-its-not-my-jam","tag-my-cup-of-tea","tag-on-the-funny-side"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49132,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37231\/revisions\/49132"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}