Come On, Tony, We're Not THAT Bad

Having faced Tony's slings and arrows, I felt it only proper that I take a minute to explain this whole "wicked mental dance" that Markoni and I engage in in Tony's presence, apparently to his great dismay and chagrin.

All kidding aside, this is a phenomenon that I have been accused of engaging in more than once in my lifetime. And I'll be honest, it's totally true.

Several years back one of my good friends from childhood managed to hook himself a new girlfriend. This poor soul was condemned to spend an evening with "the guys" for the first time shortly thereafter. Apparently we engaged in conversation of much the same type, because by the end of the evening she had flat out demanded that we "stop speaking in code", as it was very upsetting to feel like an outsider.

In that case, we told her to toughen up and learn the language. ;)

What Tony is describing is a very real phenomenon, and one that I am totally guilty of perpetuating. Namely, I speak referentially. My mind is a giant hyperlinked database, full to the brim with dialog, commentary, trivia and extemperaneous knowledge from my years of geekdom. My knowledge of several subjects is encyclopedic and my memory for dialog and situations is both instantaneous and frightening.

I've known Tony for over a decade now, and until recently this coded dialect was never a point of concern for him. The reason is obvious enough: If only one person is "in" on the jokes they're saying, then nobody else notices. But once Markoni entered the picture, I found another person who shares that collective memory of minutiae.

With Markoni, my references are limited to media that I am certain we've both immersed ourself in. (i.e. No Simpsons references, a bummer for me, as I have most of the first eight seasons memorized.)

What Tony sees as a secret language is really nothing more than the ability of two people to have an almost instant recollection of dialog, commentary and scenes. I am fully convinced that this ability is a naturally born trait. I have yet to meet a person who just "learned" the language.

The one point of contention I have with Tony's entry is the statement that "Never an original thought or opinion is expressed as they vie for verbal and mental supremacy with each other." It is THROUGH recitation of verse, dialog and ideas that our opinions come to the forefront. Sometimes we can use the words of others to strengthen our statement, sometimes to pepper, and sometimes to just flat out say what we want in better terms.

A lack of understanding of the language does not, in fact, mean that our communication is shallow or superficial.

Much as you might expect two astrophysicists in a room together to drone on and on about Higgs Boson and string theory, so too must you expect a pair of dyed in the wool geeks to speak their respective language.

Besides, T, you can always ask what a reference meant. ;)