that made me smile
i like that you develop languages/memes/words with people as you get closer to them.
last night watching the final season of game of thrones with a mate, i said something about how a character’s “yark got guffed” we exploded in laughter and he said, “there is literally no one else on the planet you can say that to, and have it make sense or be this funny!”
it’s true!
there’s this meme based on the garfield comics, where garfield says something and john says “GARFIELD! ARE YOU SLASH J OR SLASH SRS?!”
Yujin and I would reference this meme so much that it eventually became truncated and just another highly contextual word in our shared lexicon. One day during a semi serious discussion, I said something and they responded with “garfield?”
in an entirely straightforward and serious manner, they were asking if i was joking or not, and without missing a beat, equally as seriously, i said “garfield.” while nodding.
so much context and understanding between people in such a limited exchange that would otherwise be meaningless to anyone else.
it’s funny, in elementary school i got suspended in art class for a joke i made while reading a book compilation of garfield comics, (which i was a huge fan of, newspaper comic strips in general. nice old lady named Cecile on the first floor of our apartment building used to save them for me. So nice of her. i hope her death was peaceful and easy.)
in my adulthood i walked out of an orientation for a job because the instructors just could not stay on topic, teaching us what mattered. the three of them went off on endless tangents and anecdotes about someone how much they loved someone named Gary Vee, and the New England Patriots, and how hot but not fun and restrictive their wives are. looking around me at the stuffy cubicles and corporate casual wear with endless insufferable useless fucking anecdotes i started to suffocate. the HR lady came out of her office to tell us about the bi-annual garfield memorabilia collection convention she was heading to next month. her garfield yarn, her garfield mugs, this particular very rare garfield clock she hoped to get.
i couldn’t take it. when the lunch break started to end i found myself unable to walk back into that room to listen to more talk of garfield and football and internet scam personalities, so i called an uber, waved goodbye to the girl i knew from highschool who was also at orientation (i looked so different at the time, she thought i looked familiar but couldn’t quite tell where she knew me from. i convinces her she knew my brother who she had gone to high school with. i had been estranged from my family for a while and living in california but when the brother she went to school with killed himself i came back to be with the family)
i got in the car as everyone headed back in for lunch, i saw my instructors standing in a group outside smoking cigarettes and looking miserable about- i don’t know, maybe how miserable their dead end lives were (i was and am equally if not much more miserable about how ive spent my own life)
the car drove away, i thought about garfield and couldn’t help but crack a smile remembering those interactions with yujin, and how ridiculous everything i had just sat through was, and how i wished the sepsis took me earlier that year, and soon i was cackling in cartoon laughter, as i noticed the garfield toy on my driver’s dashboard.
like, garfield???
post script
the past few days i’ve been battling the urge to hop on a dating app. this cycle is hilarious. i can’t do it anyway since im refusing to pay for my phone bill, or rather can’t afford to, fuck is doubly hilarious. what do you think you’re doing trying to go on dates if you can’t pay your phone bill!
