329. Slang

It’s never my favorite day. Once a month, C.W. sits me down for what he calls “Idioms for Idiots” training, or sometimes. “slang for the species.” I can always tell when the time has come since he shows up in his college-professor guise—his version of how he thinks a professor would look: dark-rimmed spectacles, a small goatee, and a mismatch of clothes set off by a sport coat with leather patches on the elbows. No … really, the full nine yards.

Anyway, it was time and I dreaded it, for in these moments he can worry the horns off a billy-goat. He eased in cautiously, an unlit pipe in his hand. “I think,” he said, “that Mrs. Big Dope just insulted me.”

“Oh? I can’t imagine that. How?”

“She said that I ‘made her ass want a dip of snuff,’ and I don’t think she meant it as a compliment.”

“What was your first clue?”

That stumped him. He said, “She didn’t offer any clues, she just said …”

“I know. I know. I think she meant that you were getting on her nerves.”

He pondered this. “How does on ‘get on’ a bundle of fibers that transmits impulses of sensation to the brain or spinal cord, and impulses from these to the muscles and organs?”

“It’s a saying.” I said. “You have to take it with a grain of salt.”

“Sodium chloride effects this neurological miracle?”

“Let’s just say that I think you were bugging her.”

“You mean I turn her into a suborder Heteropera of the order Hemiptera?”

I sighed. “Why don’t you just give her some space for a while?

He bristled. “One doesn’t give away space. One travels through space.”

“Do you have any other terms that are making your pillow lumpy?”

“That would be pillows, plural,” he said. “I like to sleep in my natural state. I order them on-line and they are never lumpy.”

“Whatever. Now what terms are giving you trouble?”

“Well,” he said, pulling a notepad from a coat pocket, “I did overhear this in a bar.”

“You’ve been going to bars again? I thought we put that notion to rest.”

He started to respond, thought better of it, and read, “I don’t know where that ‘thang’ has been.”

“You heard that in a bar?”

“More than once. What does it imply?”

“Uh,” I said. “It probably implied that someone wasn’t going to get lucky that night.”

“Lucky? It wasn’t a casino. It was a bar.”

“Do you have another one?”

“Let’s see … oh yes, ‘She was squirmin’ like a worm in hot ashes’ or something like that. What’s that all about?”

“I don’t think you need to know what that is all about,” I said. “Don’t you have any examples from normal conversations?”

“Let’s see.” He read down. “Oh,” he said. “Here’s one. Two men are talking and one says to the other, ‘That farmland I own is as rich as five feet up a bull’s ass.'”

“That means it is good land,” I said. “The best.”

“Why didn’t he just say that?”

“Do you have more, or are you just jerking me around?”

This seemed both to confuse him and hurt his feelings. “I only do this,” he said, “because the Falloonian elders make me.”

“We all have our crosses to bear.”

Something tells me that she isn't falling for
that, "Did you fall from Heaven?" line. - C.W.

He brightened. “Now,” he said, examining his notes, “I heard that expression in a bar.”

“A bar?”

“A bar.”

“How?”

“A man told a woman that he was trapped in an unhappy marriage and she told him …”

“That we all have our crosses to bear.”

“Yes,” he said. “What did she mean?”

“She meant,” I said, “that he wasn’t going to get lucky that night.”

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302. Conversation

He wandered in while I was working on the computer at our downtown condominium. I really didn’t want conversation but he seemed distraught, at least his chosen personage—a young man of color—seemed distraught.

“What’s up?” I said.

“That’s it,” he said.

“What the heck?”

“There you go again,” he said as he slumped into a chair.

“Are you jackin’ me around or what?”

“Aargh,” he said.

“Why don’t you just chill for a moment,” I said.

“That’s it. I can’t,” he said.

“What’s bugging you,” I said. “Spill.”

“I haven’t understood a word you have said since I came in,” he said.

“You’re sh…,”

“Please don’t,” he said, interrupting. “I’m confused enough already.”

“I can see you have a burr under your saddle,” I said.

“First thing you said when I came in,” he said, “was ‘what’s up?’ as if you couldn’t look there for yourself.”

“The scales are falling off now,” I said. “You don’t like our lingo.” I was beginning to have fun.

“It’s not that I don’t like it,” he said. “It’s just that I’m having an attack of confusion.”

“What set you off?”

“See?”

“What jerked your chain?”

He ignored me. I tried again. “What’s making your mattress so lumpy?” I thought for a moment that he might cry. “Your Idiom Distilling Intergalactic Operational Translator isn’t working, is it? Gone on the blink again?”

“IDIOT,” he said.

“Bingo,” I said. He looked at me funny. “So what,” I said, “has your undies in a wad?”

“Do you mean for me to enlighten you on the cause of my current distress.”

“Give the man a cigar,” I said.

“I don’t smoke cigars.”

“About your troubles,” I said. “Lay it on me.”

He sighed. “It started as I descended in the elevator. It ended with my being called into the Manager’s office and threatened.”

“Get out of town,” I said.

He ignored me. “This quite attractive young woman entered the elevator on the 11^th floor. She was, how do you say, stunningly beautiful.”

“A Ten,” I said.

“No,” he said. “A female.” He stopped and thought. “I forgot. You don’t have multiple species categories here.”

“Oh,” I said. “We do, but we don’t admit it. Let’s just say she was a Ten.”

“Whatever you say,” he said. “Anyway, I had been confused by your language habits since I left you to go walking. Remember what you said to me?”

“Uh, no.”

“You said, ‘See you later alligator,’ as if that might make some sense. I couldn’t get it out of my heads.”

“Let’s don’t talk too much about your multiple heads,” I said. “Anyway, I see,” I said. “So I gave you a verbal ear-worm.”

He looked at me, started to speak, and didn’t.

“Go on,” I said.

“So I transitioned,” he said, “into research-mode.”

“Uh oh,” I said, “dark clouds on the horizon.”

“Where?” he said, turning to look out the windows.

“Never mind,” I said. “So you were out to gain insight into our speech patterns?”

“Precisely,” he said. “Then the elevator stopped on the first floor and my troubles began.”

I nodded. “Trouble follows a seeking mind,” I said. “What happened?”

Big Dope always says that silence is golden.
I think I know what he means, now. - C.W.

“It was a simple matter of clarification,” he said.

“Fill me in.”

“As the door opened, this, this …”

“Goddess,” I said. “I know who you are talking about, but don’t let my wife know.”

He nodded and continued. “This young lady turns to me and says, ‘Have a nice day,’ and started to exit.”

“And?”

“I simply said, ‘Would you really like to see me have a nice day?’ And, as you are fond of saying, all hell broke loose.”

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