Just Off Center

In college we learned that good communication occurs when the transmitter encodes the message for optimal reception, transmits the message through the background noise and the receiver… receives the message, and then decodes the message for its true meaning. This is all just college jargon for getting your point across effectively. In any relationship, problems occur because one person intends to say one thing and ends up saying it in such a way that the other person thinks something else. This happens a lot between Nina and me. A lot of our arguments could be averted if we had a couple of those UN translators to take what I say and translate it into Nina-speak, and vice-versa.

Over the years I’ve learned what Nina means when she says one thing or another. I’ve had to learn that if there are two phrases that sound similar, she’ll invariably combine the two into some nonsensical jumble. One time, she was trying to act like John Bender from The Breakfast Club when she was trying to give me a hard time. She made her hand into a “bird” and pointed her middle finger down instead of up. She then proceeded to say to me “Can you see this?” Ummm…yeah I see that, why? Or were you trying to ask me if I can hear that? Are you about to ask me if I want to you adjust the focus? This happens a lot and usually precedes Nina repeating the word “fuck” in rapid succession. Another one of her famous moves is to start a sentence perfectly, but then right before she finishes she just stops talking. Some examples are:

“If you’re going to Fry’s (grocery) could you pick me up a…”

“Oh I talked to my sister today. They’re going to be in town for the…”

“I forgot my pill last night so let me know before…”

OK, I might be taking a liberty or two with actual statements she’s made. But this happens all the time. And her mom does it too. But they understand each other perfectly. Listening to the two of them have a conversation is like watching an episode of $25,000 Pyramid where nobody ever gives an answer. However, she has learned to apply a quick fix. Often times, she’ll now start a sentence, stop dead before the end for several seconds and then say “thing”. You see, “thing” tells me that it’s my job to complete her sentence in my own head. It’s a fun little game, except that there are never any commercial breaks and the prize is me repeatedly punching myself in the head out of frustration.

Here are a few samples from the Nina Lexicon. The better you acquaint yourself with then, the more capable you’ll be of carrying on a conversation with her.

• Shitfuck – A frustrating person doing a frustrating thing. This was born of Nina’s mind while driving behind someone moving well below the posted speed limits. This has since been adapted to apply toward anyone who does anything that Nina feels is not right.
• Tripped out – Tricked out. She’ll never get this one right. Don’t bother correcting her. When she says it, she sounds whiter than me.
• Choad puffer – See Shitfuck. The term “choad” was adopted from me when she heard me calling people choads for doing something stupid. The “choad” from my understanding is the area between a person’s genitals and anus. And it’s just plain fun to say. Thinking that “choad” was another term for penis, Nina then added the “puffer” to indicate that the person called a choad puffer was someone who puffed (sucked on) penises. However, since she was incorrect in this, it now only draws images in my mind of a person blowing air on the area below my balls. Apparently this is a bad thing.
• The raw end of the stick – The short end of the stick or a raw deal. Nina fuses these together with great regularity and a long since expired hilarity.
• Drownded – Past tense of “drown”.
• Hiecallit – Anything that Nina can’t think of the name for at the time. It seems to be a permutation of “how do you call it?” It is usually uttered when she can’t think of the word for something and is usually accompanied by finger snapping. She swears that her father says it all the time. I wonder what justification that is. My father says “nigger” a lot. Will that excuse help me when I’m being bludgeoned to death?
• Exhaling loudly for 3+ seconds – Take a deep breath. Now open your mouth and exhale loudly until all the breath is gone. This is what Nina does whenever something is frustrating her, usually associated with me. It’s her way of expressing exasperation. Her mother does it all the time too, so whenever Nina does it I usually think about choking her.
• Hang-ger – Hanger. Another weirdo thing she got from her dad is the tendency to express every “g” sound as a hard G. Ask her to try it the other way. She can’t do it. Not only that, she can’t hear a difference. The difference is subtle. One is right, the other retarded.

I’ll be sleeping in the hot water house tonight for what I’ve said about my better chain.

# posted by Mike @ 3:19 PM