The Badonkadonk Caper

A Long Island fire department volunteer by the name of Beatrice Lozada was awarded $60,000 by a judge because during her time at the firehouse the firemen teased her about having a big butt.

“I have a very big butt and they would make a lot of comments about that,” she told the New York Post.

She said that one of the higher-ups, a lieutenant, would repeatedly slap her on the butt and say “badonkadonk.” Others, seeing this lieutenant do that, also said badonkadonk. She said this was crude and insulting.

“It made me feel powerless,” said Lozada.

I know it’s not a good idea to slap women on the butt, even when everybody’s horsing around, but I never knew the word “badonkadonk” had anything to do with women. I had heard it used, but I thought it was some dumb word, like, a tennis ball hits you in the head and you say “badonkadonk.”

I’ve asked my wife if she ever heard the word, and she said she hadn’t heard it used at all. I asked others and they also said they had not heard of it.

Turns out it does have a meaning. In the Urban Dictionary of definitions that the Division of Human Rights used to help make the judgment, it means “extremely curvaceous female behind.”

But that is an insult?

One wonders if the lieutenant or his underlings knew that was an insulting remark to make to a woman. But certainly Lozada considered it an insult and so did Administrative Law Judge Robert Tuosto when he checked with the Division of Human Rights, which is the division to which Lozada filed her complaint.

Well knock me down, slap me on the forehead and hit me on the head with a tennis ball.

Badonkadonk.

You learn something new every day. The judge also fined Elmont Truck Company No. 1, where the fire people hang out, $25,000.

“[The firemen] acted more like members of a college fraternity rather than those sworn to protect the public against fire emergencies,” the judge wrote.

Not many emergencies? Between them, play checkers, keep your head down and never say the word badonkadonk.