The bitterness of one who's left behind

by anna at 06:48 PM on February 13, 2005

Several years ago the Sports Junkies debuted on a local radio station. I was instantly way cised for them. You could tell they’d known each other a long time by the way they were always finishing each other’s sentences and sharing inside jokes and anecdotes, like an old married couple does. They had nicknames for one another. They also shared a lingo that at first proved difficult to follow, but you kind of picked it up from the context.

Don’t get me wrong. It could get butt-trifling when they’d prattle on and on about some hurting sport like baseball or hockey or golf. But the banter seemed to flow so naturally, so unforced, that you could tolerate it even when the subject matter got shady. In a word, the show was money. It was… a show. So when doo-doo brown Bill O’Reilly came along and caused a shifting in time slots that left the Junkies the odd men out, I grew way bitter. For me it was a debacle. They did hook up with another station but it was far away and had a hurting signal. I promptly forgot all about them.

Now they are back and syndicated to boot. You might have even heard them in your town. They’ve moved away from the sports emphasis and in fact have shortened their name to simply The Junkies. They play games like a variation on the Newlywed Game where they ask questions like, “Which of your girlfriends would your husband be most sised to pummel?” Contestants reply in the same sly, inside slang: “It makes me bitter to say it but I’d have to go with Jamie. She’s such a silly. And I know she’d let him do the Emeril to her.”

I grew up with this guy who also had a salty language all his own. If you hung around Rog long enough you’d find yourself lapsing into his jargon. For example, the term “quee,” which means uncomfortable. As in, “I felt so quee standing in line with a box of Tampons.” Or “zooter,” which means a sudden and unexpected exhilaration. As in, “She slid her tongue up my bunghole and I’m like, zooter!” In Rogerese, the term “skullduggery” connotes oral sex. Or “fleecy,” another actual word used to describe someone who is ill-at-ease or inept in social situations. Or “cramp,” which means to interfere. As in, “I was trying to glom onto this chick but her boyfriend kept cramping me. It was so gee.” (Pronounced with a hard G, a derivative of “gay,” to mean “annoying” or “vexing.”) Of course the fact that he’d ask them if they still had that picture of his dick and balls on their nightstand and then punch said boyfriend in the face didn’t help matters either. Lastly there was “ain’t mine,” as in that is not my problem. “Man, I’ve got no place to stay and its cold outside. Think I could sleep on your couch just for tonight?” “Ain’t mine.”

In our increasingly multilingual society it is important to learn how to discern what foreign terms mean solely from the context. For example, when a clerk says, “Woo-je lie-ak at inabeg?” it prompts me to say, “Si senor. Muchos gracias, por favor.”

Maybe I botched that one. I guess I was grasping. I’ll zip it now.