Inside Jokes
2004-02-18 - 11:39 p.m.

"I wonder how long it will take before things change: the stinging fades and the inside jokes are no longer understood."

When we were young, we would speak in phrases that no one else could understand. Our words were verbal shorthand, a new dialect built upon the roots and prefixes of our experiences together. When we talked about rain, we both thought about that seemingly endless rainy day in mid-April, when we were stuck at the house all day because your brother had the car. When we discussed little fish, we were the only ones that knew that the little fish were part of a bigger river of an experience that no one else had shared.

When you talked about leaving, we made up meanings for that too. It wasn’t as though you were really going to be gone. We could still write, could still call, could still compose our foreign tongue. Of course, this is what we promised that we would do, as all good friends do when their paths diverge.

When I see you now, you’re always with your new friends. You laugh with them the way you used to laugh with me, and I laugh along, even though I don’t usually find it funny. Sometimes, I’ll try throwing in a word from our old vocabulary, and you sometimes give a half-hearted chuckle. Sometimes, you just stare at me, and your eyes say more than your mouth ever could. Sometimes, it’s hard to believe we ever spoke the same language at all.

So when I stand with your new group of friends, and you’re telling jokes, don’t be offended if I don’t laugh. I know you’re still telling inside jokes, but they’re inside you and them, not me.

Now, I’m a comedian without an audience, a joker with a collection of jokes that no one gets.

You say it’s change, and that it’s inevitable. I say that it’s sad. We’re both right, and we both know it, but neither one of us thinks it’s funny.

Special thanks to Beth, whos deep thinking inspired this story.