Okay, so the crowds weren’t quite this populous, but they were just as loud and supportive. (Yahoo Images)

Several months ago, I ran a local 10-miler. One really fabulous thing about running it was the AMAZING crowd support. There were people stretched out the whole ten miles — from young children to college students to older people. People were cheering and yelling and waving and holding up signs and playing musical instruments and singing and … well… I felt the support every step of the way.

One thing I heard yelled a lot was:

You got this.

I’d be pushing to go up a hill (far too many of them) and a college-aged student would yell at me:

You got this.

I’d be pushing to go up another damn hill and another person would yell:

You got this.

And so forth. By far, it was the cheer/encouragement I heard more than anything else.

You’re probably thinking that I’m about to take issue with the grammatical incorrectness of the cheer, but surprisingly, I’m not, even though it should be You’ve got this.

What’s actually on my mind, however, is how ubiquitous the cheer was. I don’t think there was any sort of organized effort among thousands of spectators to use that particular statement, but I am perplexed as to where this came from. I’ve since seen it written in a lot of places and heard it used by a lot of people, so it appears to be just the latest trend in the English language, but I have no idea why.

I really have no other point to this point, other than to share my perplexity over this.

(And can we all agree that perplexity is a great word?)