Every Couple needs a Secret Language

Every couple, gay or straight, whether married or in a LTR, needs their own secret language. I’m not talking Lovey-Dovey baby talk but some simple words, phrases and even gestures that seem straightforward to circumstantial eavesdroppers, but have a clandestine meaning to you and your partner.  Think of these as your safe words for non-sexual situations.

You can just feel the passion burning between these two!    (Photo Courtesy of Ryan Lintelman)

One common event every couple goes through is a situation where one of you wants to leave a scene and the other may not or may not be aware. Nightingale and I don’t have this yet because we can still use the ole “gotta go, kids are about to have a meltdown,” but I have come up with what I call the Traffic Light Protocol.

• Green Light
• Yellow Light
• Red Light

Let’s say you are at a party and you are done doing the smiling and making small talk and just want to go home, but it’s not urgent. A Green Light phrase might be “honey, did we remember to take the laundry out of the washer? I don’t want mold to set in on my work clothes.”

In the Green Light phase, you’re telling your mate that they have about 20-30 minutes to make the rounds, talk to anybody they really want to speak with and then get out of there. You are going to turn into a pumpkin soon.

Now let’s imagine a different scenario. Same party but perhaps its even duller and you just are not feeling it. A Yellow Light phrase might be “honey, I’m pretty sure we didn’t take the laundry out of the washer and I don’t want mold to set in on my work clothes.”

This is a way to say okay wrap up with ever smooching and dealing you’re doing, but don’t engage anyone new and let’s get out of here in 15 minutes or less. You are turning into a pumpkin right now.

Now let’s imagine the same party but perhaps something transpires that irks you or someone is there that annoys you, or you’ve already given the Green or Yellow alert. A Red Light phrase might be “honey, our neighbor just texted that our laundry room is flooded.”

This is the 2-minute warning. You are beyond your limit and are going to turn a Rage Beast in 30 seconds or less. Wrap it up. No long good-byes.

One last thing: You must use these sparingly and judiciously. Also, you definitely should not use phrases that will blatantly insult anyone’s intelligence.

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Summer of 99: When It all went to Hell

This time of year always brings me back to the Summer of 1999 when I experienced a terrible Series of Unfortunate Events.  I lost my job.  I broke my toe.  My roommate and I were not getting along.  I got mugged.  And I let someone special get away.

Hat tip to Nina Vallone of YouKnowKeen.  She inspired me to write this based on this post.  

It always works out in the end; if it hasn’t worked out, it’s not the end

Back in the day, before the Marathon Era of my life, I ate, slept and breathed Volleyball. I wasn’t tournament level good but I was decent enough. We use to play volleyball on Tuesdays and Thursdays in Lincoln Park.  We would play until the sun went down, then head to the bar. It was usually very late nights but I still managed to get home just before midnight and get enough sleep to make it through my mindbogglingly boring job as a paralegal the next day. At the start of summer the sun would still be out while we were finishing up the last games. But about this time next week or two, it would start getting a little darker as we finished our games.
Those were fun times but I don’t think I really ever appreciated them for what they were. I should have really just appreciated the fact that I was enjoying all the city had to offer.

“My life was a mess. I was breaking down who I had become. Knowing all too well, I was existing for the moment, living my life, hurried and worried.”

And it all came to a head on the Friday of July 19, 1999.  This was the day I got fired from my dead end job as a paralegal at Big Bucks Law Firm 1.0.  That morning started out on the wrong foot.  I was running late and as I entered the lobby, I ran into a former co-worker.  We hugged and did that thing were you try unsuccessfully to catch up on two years in 30 seconds.

Seeing her was a foreshadowing of things to come.

I don’t want to relive the dirty details of all the Unfortunate Events.  The broken toe meant I couldn’t  defend myself well against the muggers; the getting fired made me too embarrassed to call her back.    I was in G-school but couldn’t get a job in technology because I had neither a degree or experienced.  The irony of that is I wasn’t any smarter the day I got my diploma than the day before but we value that piece of paper, or at least we use to.

At the time, I felt like I was at the end of my rope.  And then I had my epiphany.  And then my Year of Hell, taking on student loans and 3 course per quarter so I could graduation within a year.  And a crappy job at a DotCom.  Things didn’t get better until they did.  And there were other special someones until there was The Special Someone.  And I learned not to be afraid of the Dark.

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Doxing is bad, but it’s even worse when you do it to the wrong person

Hey, didja hear the news? The guy who moved in down the street is a child molester who burned down an orphanage and kicks puppies. Kicks puppies! Let’s go give him a piece of our mind.  I heard it from a friend, who heard it from her brother’s girlfriend’s, uncle’s cousin’s, baby momma’s doctor who lived next door to an old class mate’s mail man, so it has to be true.

Mob burns down his house.

Oh hey, turns out we had the wrong Mr Nobody. Whoops, our bad.

Doxing: search for and publish private or identifying information about (a particular individual) on the Internet, typically with malicious intent.

 

People mean well but execute poorly.  After the shooting of Trayvon Martin, Spike Lee posted what he thought was the address of George Zimmerman.  The address in question, however, turned out to belong to Elaine and David McClain, who had nothing to do with the shooter.

“My youngest son, his last name is Zimmerman and his middle name is George,” Elaine McClain told Orlando’s WKMG TV.Apparently Lee obtained the address from one of his Twitter followers and as is par for the course with social media, shared it quickly without vetting it.  Now he is being sued for $1.2 million.

Remember Cecil the Lion?  He was hunted and killed by a Minnesota dentist named Walter Palmer.  This sparked an international outcry and greater scrutiny of trophy hunting wild animals.  The outcry lasted almost a month but I’m not so sure about the other part.  But lost in all that is the fact that many outraged individuals visited Palmer’s office and harassed his staff…who had NOTHING to do with their employer’s actions.

It’s hard to keep up but recently there were two other people who committed terrible and perhaps unnecessary acts against fellow world citizens and public opinion outrage ensues.

A Walgreens pharmacist refused to provide an Arizona woman with miscarriage medication, citing his ethical beliefs. I never understood why people with these beliefs become pharmacists. It’s not like you didn’t know you’d have to fill these prescriptions in pharmacy school!

I’m having trouble finding a legitimate news site to verify but someone posted on Facebook that a woman was kicked off a Delta flight at the Fort Wayne International Airport over a dispute about whether or not the woman’s phone was on airplane mode.  Honestly, the electronics causing interference on flights is a bit suspect,  but rules are rules.

Let’s not forget that revealing the identity of Wrigley Field’s most infamous fan sent him into hiding for the better part of two decades.

The point of all this is that even though your intentions may be good, your actions may help pave the Road to Hell.  Life is filled with unintended consequences and you just never know what might happen if you provide an angry crowd with the address of a person who had a moment of dickness.  Maybe their 4 year old kid has to learn about  bad words much sooner than any parent would like, or worse.

There are other ways to get back at these people.  Better, legitimate ways that are perhaps a little harder to implement but have much more satisfying effects with fewer unintended consequences as the byproduct.

 

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