Hey, dude

Men have a jargon all their own when talking to other males. This is not limited to teens, as I can testify to after listening to some of Joe's phone conversations. On his end, these conversations go something like this:

"Hey. Hey, man! Heyyy. Yeah, that was a bummer, man. Hey, what about -- yeah, dude. OK, I got it. Hey, talk to you later, man. Hey."

Naturally I am curious about what sort of caller makes him turn into some prehistoric creature who does little more than grunt, and so I try to find out who the caller was. I do not generally have much luck:

Me: Who was that?
Joe (shrugging): Oh, you know.
Me: No, I don't.
Joe (vaguely): Uh, some guy from work.
Me: Which guy from work?
Joe: You know.

At this point I usually give up, as it is clear his mind has shifted the phone conversation to an "inactive" box in his brain, where it is Not to Be Disturbed, and has moved on to other things. I could ask if the caller was the queen of England and he might say -- still vaguely -- "Yeah, hey."

I must note that this is NOT a representative example of Joe's phone conversations. Most sound far more intelligent than I have indicated here. For instance, sometimes they end with "bye" instead of "hey."
Okay, so the incident above only happened once. But it did happen. Even if Joe doesn't remember it.