Chuck-ese

[EDIT: This blog originally had the subtitle “Thoughts -> Words -> Attempted Speech -> Chuck-ese”.]

I suppose that it would be in good form to explain the name of my new blog in the first post.

It all begain in Eighth Grade, at lunchtime. I was dutifully describing to my friends my response to a question on an American History test they had yet to take. The answer had something to do with the Triangle Trade, and as I was using the words “trade routes,” I made a little gesture with my fingers; I pointed both of my hands downward, extended my index fingers, and moved them from side to side.

My long-time friend Steve immediately mimicked/mocked me. Mark and Ryan joined in the fun. From that day foreward, my habit of making erratic hand gestures would lead to the birth of a whole new language whose sole purpose was to mock said habit. By the end of that fateful day, we had coined four words in “Chuck-ese”:

* Trade Routes (see above),

* Ship: Make a goalpost with your hands; thumbs together, index fingers up.

* Trade Ship: Same as “Ship” but pointing downward.

* Trade Ship Trading: Make “Trade Ship”, and wiggle fingers as in “Trade Routes”

Since that day, we have added innumerable words to the Chuck-ese vocabulary:

* Third Wife: three middle fingers extended and touching, slap inner elbow of opposite arm.

* Natives with AKs: Pretend you are groping air-breasts, turn wrists excitedly.

* Government: Stomp foot on ground in front of you, and point foreward with arm of same side.

* Shoot: Make fist with hand, and place the back of said hand on forehead. Extend index finger while moving fist away from forehead. Should end with a standard pointing gesture

And so on.

That is the manner in which I express myself. This, also, is how I express myself. I do not fare well with verbal communication. I stutter certain words (such as “I”) and I talk very loudly; if the target of my speech is a pretty female, I lock up utterly; when giving a formal report, I talk very fast and into the paper I’m reading from (yet I still managed a silver medal in Informative Speech at the Baker Olympics last year); and the aforementioned gestures strike some as odd.

The idkydi stands for I don’t know you, do I?

A note on the subtitle: it is a play on Noam Chomskey’s information processing models we learned in Psychology. The Idea -> words -> phonemes -> speech model (top-down processing) has been altered to reflect my own shortcomings.

Good luck deciphering the crap,

- Chuck