Slang – What Does ‘I Can’t People Today’ Mean?

In very generalized terms, it means:

If you meet the stated requirements, I will let you proceed. If you clearly do not meet the stated requirements and are attempting to convince me that I should let you proceed anyway, I will force you to leave.

Most commonly, the "stated requirements" are "can you pay the amount I am demanding", i.e. "do you have enough money". For a literal application of the phrase, consider a couple of poor college students trying to get into a party for which there is a $25 entrance fee. If they show up without enough money, and instead of paying they attempt to convince the gatekeeper that they are friends of the band, he might well tell them "Money talks, BS walks" as he refuses them entry.

To blow a man is to perform fellatio on him. To "blow on" someone is simply to release a puff or stream of air between your lips in that person's direction from a point of close proximity. There are three jokes here:

1. The mother probably said "you don't know whom I had to blow to get the reservation," humorously implying that the only way she could get the reservation is by exchanging a sexual favor. (Well, it's more likely that she said "who I had to blow", but hey, I'm pedantic.) It's not uncommon to make that sort of jokey comment. For example, if I obtain a rare, out of print book for a friend who very much wanted but couldn't find it, I might say "I had to blow the previous owner to get it."

2. It's possible that the mother deliberately says "blow on" instead of "blow" to avoid the sexual meaning in conversation with the nine year old. Or she did say "blow" but he does not get the sexual reference, and assumes she said "blow on". Either way, the idea of blowing on somebody is silly, of course, particularly in the context of using that action to get a favor. Part of the humor lies in this fact.

3. Finally, the incongruity between the sexual nature of the actual statement and the innocent, silly understanding of the child provides another level of ironic humor.

Two notes in closing:

• Do nine year olds really not know what blowing someone means? The author has a less cynical view of kids that age than I do, I suppose.

• The term "blow" for fellatio is quite weird. An old joke involves one guy telling another: "Suck, you moron, suck; it's only called a blow job." An answer to this Quora question suggests that the name "blow job" itself started out as humorous, since it deliberately uses the opposite of suck to refer to an act that involves sucking.