That's Retarded!

I'm going to apologize ahead of time for this post if it offends anyone. I'm using "retarded" in the non-literal sense.

I just had a flashback to a winter break trip that I took to Utah to go skiing. Utah apparently has some interesting colloquialisms...

The first day I arrived in Salt Lake, I met some people I would be skiing with at one of the few bars we could go to, due to SLC's totally jacked up liquor laws (but that is a whole nother story entirely). Looking for some small talk to start the conversation, I asked them how the skiing at Park City was, knowing they had just returned. Mark's response, "It was retarded!". I was confused, because I thought the conditions were supposed to have been good. My response: "Why's that?". "Man, the powder was deep; the sun was shining; we found this retarded jump and caught huge air! Everything was retardedly good." His girlfriend chimes in: "Yeah, you caught retarded air!" (I'm not exaggerating. It was really like that.)

So, apparently "retarded" means exactly the opposite of what I thought it meant. I've heard "wicked" and "sick", but never "retarded". The thing is that "wicked" and "sick", though they have negative connotations in the literal sense, really aren't used as negatives in slang. "Retarded", however, is used with a negative connotation in the slang sense. My friend Darren and I would use "retarded" as a negative to further confuse the situation (i.e. the skiing was retarded with 40mph winds, painful snow, and 10 foot visibility). If you ask me, whoever invented it in the positive sense was probably retarded.

If you know any similar colloquialisms, let me know in the comments! (P.S. Our Illini bball team is still #1!)