read this if you don't want salmonella

Check on your friends that never trust if their chicken is cooked all the way.

Not me tho. Mine is always perfect I just have to cut into it seven times first to be sure.

Let’s get into it:

[oak drive]

someone said “did i really have a childhood? my memories are fading” and suddenly i’m wondering what kind of floors were inside of my old bedroom were they wooden or were they carpet i remember my closet where i tossed all of my unwanted christmas presents and how the posters on my wall were hung there with ticky tack or sticky tack or sticky tacky i can’t recall the name but i’ll never forget that color blue and the way it left an oily spot on the back of the paper and now that i think about it i do think that i had carpet yes my sister did too that’s why we got in so much trouble when she spit out her gum and it got stuck and we decided to trim it with scissors but they found out anyways we always thought we were clever and her tv stand was this ugly white whicker with white whicker drawers and i would secretly pull and pick away at it when we were fighting pulling off tiny wooden splinters and snapping them in half to hear the crunch we must have had good times in that room and in that house and in that yard and on that street i just cant seem to figure out why it stopped me in my tracks when someone said “did i really have a childhood? my memories are fading”

Talk Familiar To Me

I learned a new word today and I want to talk about it. Think about it. Share it with you.

Kathryn Hymes wrote a piece in The Atlantic about familect and for some reason finding a word for this phenomenon feels comforting to me.

Maybe it’s because invented words and in-jokes feel like one of the most intimate things about a friendship or relationship.

They are markers of time spent together. These words only come into being through a common necessity: shared time.

And the older I grow the more that time becomes a currency with which I am frugal in how I spend it. I’m careful. I keep it folded into sweaty wads stuffed into my sock for safe keeping.

You’ll only see my stinky time if I want you to.

But even then, I may be embarrassed to show you how much it’s worth. Maybe I’ll even act like I’ve got plenty more of it back home in a drawer. Here. Take it. It’s yours.

And in our time together, we talk. And as we talk, we swirl words into something like a secret. We say it aloud and we know they won’t get it - not like we do.

It’s our invented word.
It’s our in-joke.
It’s our marker that tells the world of our time spent together.

I’m obsessed with sharing space and having our own vocabulary.

“Why We Speak More Weirdly at Home”. . .

I’d argue that home is where the weirdly is.

Butterfly your chicken.
Until next time. - cd