"Hi guy!" Did your hometown (like mine) have its own unique catchphrase?

Recently, my old classmate Bob Risko posted something on a Facebook group of which I'm a member called "You know you're from Wickliffe if..."

Wickliffe is, of course, the city where I've lived my entire life. I'm sure there are plenty of these types of FB groups where people who grew up together share memories and experiences common to their particular town.

Bob's post, completing the sentence "You know you're from Wickliffe if..." simply said: "If you have used the words 'Hi guy.'"

99.99999% of the world would look at that post and rightly ask, "Huh?"

The other .00001% of us grew up in the 1970s and 80s in Wickliffe, Ohio, and those words made us all smile.

"Hi guy!" was just something we said to each other. In my time, it was in response to someone who said or did something stupid or weird. Some of the comments under Bob's post suggested that, in the years before my time, it was used as more of a noun (someone could be a "hi guy") and was considered more of a direct insult.

It was fascinating to read those comments. Many Wickliffe-ites who hadn't uttered the words "Hi guy!" in decades were suddenly waxing nostalgic about them.

What intrigues me about this phrase was that it was entirely a Wickliffe thing. We never met anyone from a surrounding city who said it.

Conversely, it wasn't just a small, isolated group of Wickliffe kids who used it. It was clear from the comments that it sprang up in the 70s and was used through the 80s and into at least the early 90s.

And now it's dead. No current Wickliffe kid has any idea what "Hi guy!" is all about.

One of the big revelations in this discussion came from Terry Jo DeBaltzo, who revealed the origins of "Hi guy!" It was a phrase used in TV commercials for Right Guard antiperspirant, including this one from 1972 and this one from 1978.

So here we have a peculiar little phrase that someone took from a TV commercial and began using. It gained greatly in popularity only within one particular city, evolved in meaning over time, and died away two decades after it sprang up.

You could have lived your entire childhood and teen years in a neighboring city like Willowick or Euclid without ever hearing the words "Hi guy!" whereas it was a regular part of the vocabulary of the similarly aged Wickliffe kid whose house was maybe 100 yards away from yours just across the city line.

I am no linguist, but I find this fascinating. Have you experienced anything similar in the place where you grew up?