Flashes of Panic

Scheherazade has me reminiscing again, this time about private jargon. If this is too much for one day, well, come back and read it later.

Once upon a time, I lived with this guy, which should be enough introduction for now. Every once in a while, we’d do something completely mundane, and he’d get this wild look in his eyes and say, “Boy, we live on the edge.” And I’d look back and say, “If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.”

Eventually, we’d gone through this call-and response enough times that I started prefacing my end with, “You know what I say: …” After several more repetitions, that became his cue to follow up with the clichè which started out as my response.

By the time we moved and split a house with a third guy, “You know what I say,” from either of us, encompassed the entire exchange.

Finally, he moved out and in with his girlfriend (now his wife) and those days passed on. The third guy and I developed a minimalist language centered on communicating as much as possible with varying inflections on the word, “Dude.”

To some degree, I miss that.