Lost In Translation

My husband and I have been together for so long that we don't need to speak to each other in complete sentences all the time. Sometimes one of us will start a sentence and the other one will finish it. Other times, a sentence will just trail off with no ending and still be perfectly understood. There are even times when a single word is sufficient.

Of course, we also have conversations that wouldn't make sense to anyone but us. I'll say something like "What did you have for lunch today?" and he'll say "One of those things" and I'll say "Did you put that stuff on it?" and he'll say "No, I used the other stuff, but it was good". Makes sense to me.

If you are visiting our house, it's very helpful if you speak and understand movie quotes fluently. For example, if you said that you hated someone, you may get "If hate were people, I'd be China" as a response. It comes from the movie City Slickers. If you were foolish enough to begin a sentence with "All I need..." you would likely hear "All I need is this pen and maybe this chair" in a bad Steve Martin impersonation from The Jerk. "Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'" is what you would probably hear if you were pondering what to do with your life. That's a quote from The Shawshank Redemption. And if you were unnecessarily uptight about something, you would be told to "Lighten up Francis" which is from the movie Stripes. If you're totally clueless about something, "May I mumble dog face through the banana patch" is a perfectly acceptable response. Steve Martin used to use it in his stand up routine.

When I was a kid, I assumed all the words we used were commonly understood by all English speaking people. I didn't know that we had our own version of slang. If we visited my grandparents and my grandma made me a sandwich she would cut it diagonally and call it a "Sunday cut". My mom cut sandwiches straight down the middle, so I thought a "Sunday cut" was pretty fancy. Imagine my embarrassment when I used the term among my friends. When I was really young, about two or three, I thought a robe was called a robe-on because my mom would ask me "Do you want your robe on?" when I got out of bed in the morning.

I'll be back later to open the bar. I hope to see you then!