My best girl friend, Sandi (I call her SML because that is her initials), is word-challenged. She’s plenty smart, but sometimes has difficulty expressing herself. She uses words in strange combinations that don’t really make sense, but after years of exposure I am able to silently translate them in my head. So, I know what she means, and I can translate her speech for others, too. But one day we had a whole new problem.
She started a sentence gamely, in a strong voice: “He totally supposed to was — he was supposed to show it around us…” The last few words each got progressively softer and slower, then she stopped. I was waiting to translate, but she just trailed off.
“What happened to the rest of the sentence?” I asked.
A helpless look flickered across her eyes and she admitted plaintively, almost in a whine, “I got tired!”
That’s when I, the editor of the Shrake-tionary, realized we needed another new word: linguisomnia.
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I wandered over to a lady friend’s due to boredom. I like her, I like talking to her and stuff. She is from the Midwest, as I am.
LADY FRIEND: (sighing) “Ugh, my job is killing me. Good thing I’m going on vacation tomorrow.”
ME: (bright, perky) “Yeah, that is a good thing, right? People like those vacations. You’re going to Europe, right?”
LF: (matter-of-factly) “No, that’s next month.”
ME: (perky) “Where are you going then?” (continuous smile)
LF: “Just Chicago. My family and I are meeting there.”
ME: “Why?”
LF: “My cousin is coming back from Afghanistan. He’s a pilot on his second tour of duty.”
ME: (with innocent curiosity) “Oh! That sounds interesting. For which side?”
LF: …
ME: (innocent, bright and perky): “Wars have two sides, don’t they? At least two, right?”
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A coworker was twirling out a really juicy story for me, about his ex. I was listening excitedly, only interrupting if I needed clarifications of things. You know how that is.
One of the story’s many characters was a woman who had given birth to three babies in fewer than three years.
To show I was paying attention, I said, “Uh-huh. She’s having kids a lot?”
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READ MORE WRONGAGERY: PARTS 2, 3, 4 AND 1
