In defense of inside jokes, words, and zwieback

My previous entry takes my daughter to task for having public convesations filled with private references.� I should be ashamed of myself.

I’m not, but thinking back, I was party to a few noteable inside jokes myself.� My cousin, Mark, and I were pretty close, and we thought we were pretty funny when we were together.� Many times, there were certain words that amused us, and we’d take them as our own and use them for all sorts of unintended purposes.� Zwieback is the one I remember.� It served as both a greeting and a sending, and it was a hard working adjective (“Zwieback Bells” at Christmas).� It seemed to have more uses than profanity, and even subbed for profanity.� Even today, when we talk to each other, invariably we greet each other with “Zweiback!”�

I also remember my friend Keith and I developing a code language to talk about female anatomy that was based on bicycle parts.� We went through a serious bicycling phase, so I guess it was natural to comment that I liked Jill’s…fill in the bike part.� I’m too chicken/politically correct to post a real example – every one that I think of sounds pretty crass now.

There you have it.��The inside jokes are�a phase, a mid range gear.� They’re all going to�grow into the tandem eventaully.

Zwieback!