#55 Mean Streets

If you’re like me, you’ve probably asked yourself: What does it all mean? And if you’ve ever been married, you’ve probably asked yourself: What was I thinking? Just kidding. Everyone knows the key to a successful marriage is communication. Communication is about using words. So understanding what it all means in a slightly different sense is how to make marriage—and life—work. As in: what does that specific word mean?
For example, a good friend of mine was relating a story of his son. They were standing at the checkout stand in the grocery store for the umpty-umpth time over the years and the checker asked him, for at least the jillionth time: Paper or plastic? My friend said paper, the checker shook one out noisily, and the kid said with this huge sense of epiphany: “Oh, the bags!”
You see, for all those years the kid thought the checker was asking about my friend's preferred mode of payment—paper or plastic? Bills or credit cards. The youngin’ had probably heard credit cards referred to as plastic sometime in his early formative years and its default meaning was forever associated to money, not bags.
We all make those assumptions daily. We assume people know what we’re talking about. Look what I just said a few sentences ago. I used the term umpty-umpth. It’s also rendered as um-pet-y-umpth and ump-teenth. But we all know what it means. In the dictionary, I was able to find “umpteen” as slang for “very many” but I’d be willing to bet there aren’t very many foreign language translation dictionaries out there that include it. I also used the word jillionth. Again, not a word foreigners would get but one we use all the time. If you ever want to have some fun with the whole outsourcing thing, make a technical assistance call to one of your computer or electronic device companies. When you get transferred to India, see if you can get the American-job-stealing person on the other end confused with terms like umpty-umpth and knarly. I was in contact with one recently. She was pretty good language-wise until she had to spell something out and use the letter double-u. “That’s dub-ie-you” she said, “as in viskey.”
“How’s the weather in India?” I asked.
“How did you know I was from India?”
“Just a quess. I bet that’s the umpty-umpth time you’ve been asked that.”
“Vat?” she said.
“Nothing,” I replied. “Do they have good viskey there?”
I did have to laugh the other day though. Apparently, one of our local Asian entrepreneurs has mastered the language quite well. I say this because the true test of proficiency in language is to be able to pun. Like when I say I was at the restaurant the other night and I left a tip so big it was a gra-three-ity. You know I know the sound “tu” has two meanings. Anyhow. This entrepreneur’s name is Y-O-N-G. Yong. And she named her beauty shop “Forever Yong.”
Cowabunga, Dude!
America, ya gotta love it.