Delia and I spend a lot of time making sounds. Sounds other people would find annoying and/or nonsensical.
We riff on words, even: single words. Words we’ve heard other people pronounce oddly. Sounds or expressions in other languages … rolling them around on our tongues. Spitting them out with different tones, mixed up accents.
Delia and I will bat a word or sound back and forth between us, just … over and over and over and over again. Long volleys that would get us kicked out of restaurants if we were to hold these types of conversations openly in public.
Lately the sound and words we’ve been playing with are Italian. Google translate taught me how to say “hey raccoon …” (among other things) when I asked it … a topic for another post. So now Delia and I keep saying “ehi” and “ehi procione” with a lot of zest and curiosity.
I don’t want to eat in restaurants surrounded by “normal” people having “normal” conversations. I don’t want to hear people talking about wine or broadcasting their cell phones. These conversations Delia and I have are *awesome* and fulfilling and super duper fucking fun and interesting and I feel like they actually accomplish something.
Like … “ehi” for “hey” makes so much sense for those of us who grew up watching Welcome Back, Kotter! It brings so much illuminating auditory flavor and spin to the word. And when we bat it back and forth … over and over and over in the car? YEAH MAN THIS IS SO FUN! Like … these are the things that would cause parents rearing our generation (x) to turn around in the car and smack the shit out of us to get us to SHUT UP!
So for me, this is the whole point of being a grown up, and being in love, and hanging out: HEY, PROCIONE!!! Want to climb this wall? I wonder if we could climb this wall? What’s around this corner? What if we go back here? Because there’s nothing playing at the theater that we want to see, and the power is out at home.
