Ticonderoga code

Q. Shenaynay

I'm always fascinated by the odd and endearing shorthand that develops within a family and between close friends -- the easy code language that emerges from days and years of sharing context.

For example, yesterday Fa and I had to smile over the way we both know precisely what's going on when one of us, looking glazed and distracted, quietly asks the other:

"Quick, please bring me a sharp Ticonderoga."

It means "and please do it quietly and don't talk to me too much just now, because I've got a poem swimming in my head and I need to hear it and I can't hear your voice just now anyway and I need to get it on paper quickly before it flees, and I'd really like to write it with one of those really smooth, fine pencils with near-liquid lead that we save back for this sort of thing because they skate across paper so and I really want to enjoy the sweetness of rendering on paper these words I'm hearing."

But "please bring me a sharp Ticonderoga" is so much more efficient, not to mention more anticipatiously suspenseful for the pencil fetcher.