L'AIMguage For LAMEguists

One of my bestest BFFs, Jah, moved to Atlanta a few years back. I thought the long distance would take a toll on our relationship, but we've managed to hold it down via AOL Instant Messenger. We AIM each other at work non-stop on a daily basis (weekends excluded). It's like she never even left. Since we chat on our respective companies' time, dime, and computers we've learned to censor our conversations in fear of "The MAN" covertly reading our scandalous and sometimes plain stupid dialogue.

Obviously, we keep foul language down to a minimum, because that's a sure way to get us shut down by the corporate IT gatekeepers. But we don't just stop there. We're convinced that even the most subtle and random words will raise red flags for The Man to sneak a peek at our verbal exchange. This paranoia induced us to practically invent our own AIM language. It's not a complete language- it's more of an array of substitute vocabulary words. Actually, it's really just our personal slang, but it feels like a language. However, our "AIMguage" is not to be confused with standard E-speak, where words are shortened for space sake. We use that too. But there's actually a full thought process and rationale behind our phraseology. The funny part is, we've been typing this in this manner for so long, that we've adapted it into our regular speaking jargon- and it totally works. As a matter of fact, I'd like to share some of our AIM slang, and you can decide for yourself whether it's brilliant :) or psychotic :( Either way, I think it's quite amusing.

NABISCO
Everybody knows The MAN is of European descent, so we try to limit talking about White people because we don't want him reading it and telling human resources we're racist or anything like that. Not that we're saying awful things about White people- they just happen to come up rather frequently in a conversation between two women of color working in corporate amerikkka (j/k). To avoid being tagged for this we refer to Caucasians as NABISCOS. I cannot take responsibility for this word. The Queen of All Media, Wendy Williams, actually coined this term. "Cracker" or "Cracka" is an old derogatory word for Whites. Nabisco is a leading manufacturer of the cracker food. You get the logic.

Race seems to always come up when Jah and I chat. We joke about it. We use race to describe people. We have serious debates about it. It isn't always offensive talk; however, people are just soooooo sensitive nowadays. THE MAN could hypothetically read our exchange and pin all kinds of race infractions against us. To play it safe, we expounded on the Nabisco logic with the following code words:

CORNBREAD - Black person
TACO - Latino person
FORTUNE COOKIE - Asian person
NAN - Indian person
MATZOH or JEWBISCO (we alternate) - Jewish person

You don't have to be super geniuses (like us) to figure out that the word corresponds to a bread popular in that particular race's culture. I know- a fortune cookie isn't a bread. It's not that serious.

Moving on...

Jah and I are pretty much thirty years old; and although we don't look a day over twenty-four, our bodies are definitely feeling the effects of old age. As a result, we're constantly discussing our physical ailments and gross bodily functions. Imagine if THE MAN got a hold of our AIM and revealed this information to the world. How embarrassing. To maintain a little couth during our distasteful moments, we use the following key words:

AUNT FLO - popular expression for menstruation.
#2 - to make doodie.
and both of those could lead to BUBBLEGUTS - tummy discomfort

Another daily topic of conversation is our weight. Jah and I are always struggling to lose fifteen to twenty pounds, which seems impervious despite all of our efforts. We both dream of the day when we'll shed those extra pounds and become BOBBLES. A bobble is short for a Bobblehead, or a girl so skinny her head looks unnaturally huge in contrast to her body. As of late, this word morphed from a noun into a verb (probably because we'll NEVER achieve bobble status). Now BOBBLE simply means to exercise.

This level of sophistication may be too much for some of you, but please try to keep up. The next group of our fab vocab consists of nicknames of people we know. Being the social butterflies that we are, Jah and I meet tons of people and can't be bothered remembering everyone's name. These nicknames actually serve as mnemonic devices to help us eliminate all the backtracking and redundancy of reminding one another of who this person is and where/when/why we know them. They also come in handy if someone we're talking about is milling about while we're AIM'ing not so nice things about them.

BL - Boss Lady. Jah and I both have female bosses, and talking junk about them using their governments would be definite grounds for termination.

DING - Two specific co-workers who regularly interrupt Jah and I, respectively, while we're busy...um... "working." Their visits are like bells- and we type "ding" to signal one another of their presence, which causes a pause in our very important conversation.

LAMO - Jah's male friend, companion, sometimes designated driver, man servant, etc. who is completely enamoured with her, but is too wack for her to date. I'm convinced they will marry in twenty years.

LAMO #2 - Another of Jah's suitors. He's in the military, has money and some magical hookup to free album downloads, but is still equal in wackness to the first Lamo.

BDD - Triple Baby Daddy - Cute guy in which Jah is actually halfway interested, but he has too many offspring. We used to call him BDDD for Baby Daddy Daddy Daddy, but we just shortened it.

MIMBO - a male bimbo who Jah's mom hooked her up with in Florida. He doesn't have enough mental capacity to keep Jah's interest.

EL BROKO - a broke loser with whom I used to jump off. I can't remember much else about him except he was really, really, really, really poor and smoked a lot of weed. He doesn't even deserve to go on the list because we don't talk about him anymore. However, since I aired so much of Jah's dirty laundry, he made the cut. He is NOT to be confused with an ex-boyfriend of mine who was also financially-challenged. I always used his "real" name since I was in luv.

MILK - A homosexual. We used to call them "How You Doins," before Wendy Williams blew up and made the word oh-so ubiquitous and way too conspicuous. Milk derives from Harvey Milk. Google him if you still don't get it.

This post will probably continue to grow as more words come to mind. I love the idea of us longtime friends creating our own little idioms and totally getting one another on that level. It makes me nostalgic for those childhood days when we made up secret codes and special clubs to certify our friendships.