Adventures in Profanity

One of my favorite people is Sonny. He’s this sassy, yet conservative, heterosexual 37-year-old Asian guy at work. I call him by name here, but I have to advise that I may be exaggerating SOME of what I write below. I have to add that disclaimer (even if it’s not true) because Sonny isn’t at all afraid to take even a dear friend to court if he thinks he can get $50 out of it.

Sonny likes to think that he has created this mysterious persona that has his friends and co-workers fooled. He uses lines like, “I’d rather not say,” with alarming frequency. He drives a large variety of cars to work (he won’t say which ones he owns or doesn’t own), he won’t tell me where all of his “property” is, although I know he owns several lots, and when he’s backed in a corner, he pulls out the race card. That’s hilarious, because he’s barely Asian. I mean, he was born in Asia, but he’s lived here since he was 10 and is way more white bread and American than most any one else I know. Besides, pulling out the Asian race card just doesn’t have much of an affect- at least in Mississippi it doesn’t. Down here, you’re either “white” or your “black”. I guess sometimes you can be Mexican, but that really only comes up when people are talking about Wal Mart as in, “Why do Mexicans always have 3 buggies and travel in packs to Wal-Mart?” It’s simply an observation, not a judgement.

Where Sonny does show some cultural differences are in the phrases he uses. He often does not understand the “real” meaning of slang. I don’t believe this is because he’s Asian. I attribute it to his wholesomeness and his Michigan upbringing. For example, he once told me that he would “queef” in my general direction. I laughed so hard I almost queefed myself. He also got offended once when I used the term “gentleman caller”. He told me that was inappropriate office talk. I don’t know WHAT he thought I meant when I said that I had had a gentleman caller over the weekend, but his assumption didn’t match my reality. Sadly.

In Mississippi, you hear a lot of funny, country-roots slang thrown around. It makes us colorful story tellers, and that’s important. In the hands of a novice, like Sonny, those colloquialisms get all twisted and he’ll say things, “He don’t know what side his leg is buttered on.” To which I chuckle and reply, “No. I’m sure he doesn’t.” We both leave the conversation satisfied.

Sonny’s been trying to buy a new truck. He’s been getting the run around from the dealership and I’ve overheard many of his conversations. Today, frustrated and put out, I heard him say, “You’d better not be pulling my dick this time. No messing around. Don’t you try and pull my dick!”

I think what he did was merge “pull my leg” with “dick around” and came up with this whole concept of dick pulling being a bad thing.

Again, his conversation left me satisfied.

He seldom uses profanity and I Iove that when he does, it may be off mark. In a way I miss those days. The days when flipping someone off was a big deal and you worried that an adult may have seen you do it. It’s nice that I can revisit those times every time I hear Sonny say something like, “If you grab a bull by the horns, you’d best be prepared to get a face full of ass.”

•   Comments(8)    Posted by liz on 08/07 at 09:33 AM
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