A Vocabulary Guide for Brian

Brian makes fun of the way I talk regularly. That makes him sound mean. Let me restate. Brian laughs at me every time I "talk pidgin." He enjoys laughing at these moments particularly because I have a BA in English Language with a minor in Editing. He is by no means disparaging or even remotely mean about it, but these moments have been frequent enough that they merit an address. Here goes.

My darling Brian,

I don't know how in six years of marriage you have still not heard or been exposed to the entirety of my limited "pidgin" vocabulary, but every time you hear a new word your response is always, "What the heck is that supposed to mean? I have literally never heard anyone ever say that and you throw it out like it's a normal word and I should just know what it means."

Well, dearest, it's because you should know what it means and it is a normal word. There are a plethora of Hawaiian pidgin vocabulary books and if you were to pick one up you would agree with me that I don't actually talk pidgin. I speak English, and you can't even pretend that I was born in Hawaii and then moved because my direct tie to the islands is one generation removed. That's right. I was born in the same state as you, and, surprisingly, the same hospital as you. But. All that aside. Here is a compilation of the words you should already know because they are normal.

all bus' up - broken, messed up, destroyed, no longer in a functioning state. ex: "The cats wen' crash into the stereo. It's all bus' up now. I don't think you can fix it."

'ass why - that's why; that is the explanation for whatever you just asked me. "I didn't get your text. Phone was on silent, 'ass why."

chawan - rice bowl. When you ask me how much I want and I say "chawan" that is a literal portion and what I want you to do is go to the cupboard, retrieve one rice bowl, and fill it with whatever you are serving.

cho-cho lips - really, really thick lips. When I point to Stanley on an episode of The Office and say, "He get real cho-cho lips, eh?" don't look at me like I'm speaking Klingon.

cockaroach - pronounced Ka ka roach - small, stingy, tight; also to steal or sneak away with. "They real cockaroach with the lettuce today, huh?" This is what I said in the Mexican restaurant last week that made you monologue loudly about my linguistic choices when really all I wanted was an affirmation that they had only put seven leaves of lettuce in my salad.

da kine - a filler word for any time I can't call to mind the equivalent English word that would make you not look at me quizzically and laugh. "Hand me da kine." ─Brian stares at me─ "Da kine." I point. ─Brian points to the notebook─ "No! Da kine! Is right in fron' yo' face." ─Brian hands me the stapler─ "Thank you."

dem - the people normally associated with the person I have just named. This usage entails that more than one person is involved, and I don't want to be bothered with listing them all out for you every time. "Your aunt dem coming over tonight for movie, ok?" Based on that sentence you should expect your aunt, your uncle, and all of their children.

funny kine - strange, weird, off, not normal. The appropriate response to me saying, "Something smell funny kine?" is not "What the crap did you just say?" and should be "Yeah, what is that? Let's investigate this abnormal aroma together."

get - to have. "I get a funny kine bump here" means "Please examine this abnormality that has suddenly appeared on my body and which has also caused me to worry about my general health and safety."

go, going - future tense. "I going swim today." Congratulate me. I have committed to exercise in a swimming pool.

haaah, heh? - I didn't hear you. Please repeat your last iteration.

hashi - chopsticks. These are far more versatile than you ever imagined and someday I will convince your mother that her life truly is lacking as a result of the absence of hashi in her kitchen assembly. I mean, really. Kitchen-aid? Nah. I get hashi.

hapai - pregnant. Whenever my sister emphatically asks me, "Hapai?" with accompanying eyebrows wiggles, please join me in giving her an irritated look.

holoholo - mess around, play, hang out. "They no can come over tonight. They going holoholo lakeside." 

howzit - hey! what's up? The problem with this phrase is that it encourages your belief that I only talk pidgin when other pidgin talkers are around. The reason I don't say this to you every day of my life is because you looked at me really, really weirdly the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth times I did so. So I stopped saying it to you.

huhu - upset, usually for no good reason. I'm actually glad you don't know this phrase because you would use it against me all the time. Even though I get plenny good reasons.

humbug - annoying, bothersome, or otherwise a hassle to complete. "Why didn't you take the trash all the way down to the dumpster?" "Was too humbug, 'ass why."

junk - terrible, awful, not worth it. "Why don't you want to go to that movie?" "Is junk, 'ass why."

kapakahi - all mixed up; all messed up; out of order, in disarray. "Why are you cleaning your desk on a Saturday?" "Is kapakahi, 'ass why."

li'dat - like that; in that manner; the way I just showed you. This term is meant to be a shortcut to avoid a lengthy explanation that really seems to be unnecessary. The shortcut is negated when you turn around and ask me not only for another explanation but a further explanation of the term I just used as a shortcut.

make - pronounced MA'kay, rhymes with "sake," means dead. "I need a pen." "What's wrong with the one in your hand? or the three on your desk?" "Make." "I don't know what you just said, but here's another pen." Do not mix this up with the similarly sounding "maki," which means "rolled" and is used when we go to my parents' house and fix food for new years. 

mo' bettah - more better. The option I have announced as mo' bettah is a superior choice in every way to the alternative. It's not just better, it's more better. Please choose it.

monku monku - to pout or otherwise behave like a disgruntled three year old. This is the face you make when you discover that your favorite pair of pants are in the wash and you have nothing in your closet except your old jeans.

musubi - rice ball wrapped in seaweed. Variations of this very versatile item include with spam, with ume, or with whatever you think will be delicious in, on, or with your musubi.

nene - sleepy, sleep, nap time, bedtime. Also "nemui." "Wanna go nene?" "Naynay. . . . Naynay. . . . Naynay?" "Wait. Are you saying you are tired and want to go nene? or are you asking me if I'm nene? You're shaking your head. You must be confused. . . . Nene?"

ni'ele - nosy.

no can - what you are asking is impossible. I have already taken into consideration every possibility associated with your request and have determined that every path leads to failure. "Are you going to your dad's shop today?" "No can." "But what about─" "No. No can." "I thought you were─" "No. No can." "But why not?" "No can. If can, can. If no can, no can."

no need - not necessary. This simple sentence means whatever is being discussed is no longer needed in the situation. "Do you need the phillips head or flathead screwdriver?" "No need!" See? Simple. Yet every time I say this you spout a string of words like, "Subject? No? Object? No? Verb conjugation? No? Degree in linguistics? Yes? Ok, weirdo."

pau, all pau - finished. I must give you credit for being able to grasp the meaning of this term and being able to recognize it in its plethora of usages in our lives as well as being able to appropriately respond when I use it. Good job you!

plenny - a lot, enough, an adequate amount for the current needs. "Did you get enough sleep?" "Yeah, get plenny."

puka - hole. You have also gotten this word well under your belt despite the rocky beginning. My mother: "We're putting up some puka puka board─" You: "What?!" "Puka puka board. We're putting up puka puka board in dad's shop." "What are you even saying? What is a puka board?" "Puka! Puka puka." "What is puka?" "Puka! Puka is puka! Puka puka board! Puka puka board has pukas!" To be honest, I thought you would give up, but you didn't. 

s'kosh, s'koshi - just a little bit. This term makes you sometimes think I am speaking Japanese to you. You are not wrong. You are also right in thinking the word means the same thing no matter how I use it. You, on the other hand, think this word can mean "short" and I must tell you that it is not correct usage to point at me trying to reach the top shelf and say, "s'koshi!" Not. Correct.

try - something like the word "please" but not quite so formal. "Can you bring me a glass of milk?" "Try wait one sec." That means I absolutely will bring you a glass of milk, but you asked me while I was typing, and I want to finish my thought. I am not actually asking you to try to do anything. A soliloquy on how trying to wait is pretty much impossible is not helping.

ukus - pronounced ookoos, lice. I don't actually know anybody who has lice, but when you wake up in the morning and scratch your head ferociously, I will occasionally jokingly ask, "Ukus?" The appropriate response would be to throw a pillow at my face and go on with your normal morning routine.

wen - past tense. "I wen swim today." You should say, "Did you have a good time?" not "You wen swim today? You wen . . . swim . . . today. . . . Are you sure you even know how to speak English?"

See how that's really not very many words at all? You speak fluent Spanish and frequently shout whole Spanish conversations in your sleep. I have every faith in your ability to recognize these few words as part of my completely normal vernacular. 

Much love,

Me

P.S. I do sometimes worry when your dreams require a reply so violently loud that I snap straight upright in bed and reach for my gun. Is there a reason that you shout in Spanish in the middle of the night? I'm learning Spanish just so I can try to get to the bottom of this. 

Woes of Haste

I’ve just come from a rather gruesome shower which culminated in me proving to be somewhat of a sissy. In fact, I’ve never shed so much blood since the Spontaneous Nosebleed of ‘09 nor acted so childish since, well, I was a child. Now to warn any of a queasy or non-sanguinary nature, I will indeed be spending this entire essay talking about what turned into a rather gory incident, so if you’re put off by that, simply close this and move on with your life. For the rest of you, don’t worry too much. I won’t be savagely engrossed in grotesque details, but nor will I gloss over some of the more intense moments.

I was cleansing myself in my usual daily routine. Hair and body were washed and rinsed, and I had just used the last of my Pantene Pro-V Frizzy-to-Smooth conditioner. With the conditioner rinsed out of my now silky hair, I was enjoying the warmth of the shower and the ambiance of the steam-filled room when I glanced down and realized I hadn’t shaved my legs in over a week. I stared at them some more and tried to think of at least four reasonable alternatives to ridding my legs of the hair without shaving them right now. 1. Wax. I could wax them. There was a coupon in the latest mailer that gave me a free area wax with the purchase of an equal or greater area. I could do a leg and get an armpit for free! 2. I could wear long pants and hope nobody ever noticed. 3. I could put cream on my legs and see if cats licking it off would really take the hair with it. 4. . . . 4. . . . 4. . . . Dangit.

I sighed and looked around for the shave cream which was hiding rudely in the first corner I checked but didn’t see and therefore spent two minutes fruitlessly poking my nose in the other corners before seeing it where it belonged. I lathered up and half-heartedly enjoyed the scent of Skintimate’s shave gel. Not one of the fruity ones, just plain and simple Soothing Escape. I grabbed the razor off one of the shower shelves and started in on my right leg. Ankle to knee. Ankle to knee. I’ve no idea how other people shave their legs but my routine is very methodical and exactly the same every time. I start in the front just to the lateral side of my shin and shave the outside. Then I cross over to about three inches medial of the shin line and shave the inside. Lastly I shave the small band dead center on the front of my leg. Usually this prevents me from missing anything, but a once-over for strays never hurts.

Now, for the record, the last time I legitimately cut myself shaving was when I was fourteen, and I ended up gashing into that tricky area around the back side of the ankle. Since then a small nick near either the knee or the ankle has not been unheard of every six to eight months. Notwithstanding so peaceful a history handling blades, I proved today that I am not to be trifled with when haste and inattention are at hand!

I had shaved ninety percent of my right leg, remembering to stretch the ankle and knee areas appropriately to avoid undue inflictions. Lateral, medial, center. Just the center left. I rinsed the lather out of the blades and reached down and set the razor at the base of my shin. Just as I’ve done countless times for the last eleven years, I drew the razor straight up to my knee and watched the foam collapse beneath the swiftly sliding steel. Suddenly something was very, very, very wrong. My eyes were fixed on the middle of my shin where a patch of my leg was quite simply gone.

I just stared. This was unprecedented. What does one do? I stared. My olive toned skin was smooth and hairfree up to very nearly the dead center of my leg. Immediately inside my shin a patch had appeared. It measured approximately three inches in length and one and a half inches in width. The skin was just gone. Where it had been was momentarily white then tiny specks of red appeared. It looked as though someone had fired the tiniest buckshot charge in the world into my leg.

“I think,” I said quite loudly, “I think I’ve cut myself.” My dear Brian was not far off and poked his head in when he heard me.

“Sweetheart, why?”

That snapped me out of it. “It’s not as though I did it on purpose!” I shook the foam out of the razor and looked grumpily down at my leg. There was still a swath of leg left to be shaved and right next to it I was now bleeding profusely. Brian grabbed the razor out of my hand and said, “Sweetheart, your skin is in here.”

I admit I didn’t really hear him. I grabbed the spare razor and finished off the last band of shaving. At the very least I was not going to be half done. Then it started hurting. Then it started hurting a lot. The entire patch was bleeding very steadily and all the blood was running down the inside of my leg and seeping across the floor of the tub. Any blood-and-gore movie maker would have paid handsomely for the shot. I would have paid just as much for my skin to instantly regrow.

So much for the gruesome shower part and now for the bit in which I am a complete sissy.

Brian set about gathering things to play doctor for me. I wanted it to stop bleeding and even more to stop hurting. The whole area was throbbing by now, and my leg was literally getting a blood bath. Our shower head detaches, and I pulled it down and quickly swished it over the front of my leg. The pain was sharp and intense, and I whined. One swish didn’t do much. I angled the head around so that I could rinse all the blood off without getting any water on the wound. I was almost proud of myself until I realized that as soon as I rinsed off the existing blood more just rushed in. I frantically swished several times above and below the wound and once very gingerly and quickly over the patch itself. I thought I had conquered and shut off the water. I stepped out on the bath rug and immediately hopped back in. There was blood everywhere. Everywhere. I finally just stood pouting in the shower with blood running freely all over the place.

Brian had assembled a very motherly kit of wound attendance items. Gauze, fine. Large Band-Aid, I approve. Triple anti-biotic ointment, very nice. Hydrogen peroxide: “No.” I said loudly and with what I believed to be an air of compelling finality. “No hydrogen peroxide.” Brian stared at me.

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“NO.”

“Yes.”

“It hurts.”

“It will get infected if you don’t.”

“No, it won’t.”

“Yes, it will.”

“I was in the shower!”

“Did you wash it with soap?”

“It was under the shave cream!”

“Shave cream doesn’t clean stuff!”

“Well I cleaned it first and then put the shave cream on!”

“You still need to keep it from getting infected.”

“It won’t get infected.”

“If it gets infected it will hurt a hundred times more.”

“It won’t get infected.”

“Put hydrogen peroxide on it. It’s not going to hurt that much.”

“Yes, it will.”

“No, it won’t. Put it on.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“You put it on yourself then.”

“No.”

I was outraged.

If I said no then that was final. No it was and No it would ever remain until I said yes. If I said no hydrogen peroxide then by heaven and earth no hydrogen peroxide would there be!

Apparently, nobody ever told that to Brian.

“You do it or I will.”

“No.”

Brian stood with a gauze pad in one hand and the terrible bottle in the other. I stood with my arms folded in the shower trying to look immovable. Brian stepped forward. I looked down at my leg. I had managed to wrap a towel around my shoulders but that was the full extent to my wardrobe. I was furthermore bleeding unstoppably, and Brian was between me and the door menacingly wielding the gallon-sized jug of hydrogen peroxide. I stood contemplating an escape plan when Brian promptly executed a sneak attack. I hardly had time to yelp. He dumped the peroxide liberally over the area while I whimpered unnecessarily. It didn’t hurt that bad, but don’t tell Brian.

I fully expected the trauma of being drowned in hydrogen peroxide to effectively cauterize the blood flow but no such luck. After two seconds’ respite, the blood resumed its mass exodus from my lower leg. Brian stared at the patch for a second and said, “I don’t think the band-aid will work.” He pulled out a fresh piece of gauze (the first one being used in the aftermath of the hydrogen peroxide attack), folded it in half and pressed it over the skinless patch. I held it in place while he dried off the rest of my leg. Then he tried to spread some ointment on the wound, but the blood filled the space so quickly that he couldn’t get it off his finger and reliably onto the leg. He ended up spreading it over the gauze pad and then bandaging the gauze to my leg.

Brian sweetly washed the remaining blood off my foot with a washcloth and helped me out of the shower. He hugged me and asked me if I was ok, and when I confirmed that I was not in need of hospitalization, he promptly kissed me on the head and went back to reading about Greek philosophers. I toweled off and gingerly ran my hand over the sore area. As far as I could tell, at least, I wasn’t bleeding through the bandage. Phew. I was extra attentive as I pulled on clean clothes. My right leg made it in just fine, and I was just breathing a sigh of relief as I pulled my left leg through. Then I looked again.

I didn’t shave my left leg.

Stretched AND Framed

Brian spent a month in Morocco where he drove around in the sand, did not shower for three weeks, and returned gifting me a seashell and a beautiful painting on canvas. The painting wasn’t framed and I kept telling myself I would get to it but was continually putting it off in dread of the very idea of entering a craft framing store. Seven months later the Christmas festive atmosphere and the bare walls of our new condo instilled in me the courage to face the daunting world of a Roberts’ craft store.

I have always been unwilling to enter craft stores. Aside from slightly traumatizing memories of being fawned over, cooed at, and showered with stickers bearing images of barbies, flowers, and kittens in bows, I dislike craft stores on the whole for the overwhelming amount of seemingly useless materials that fill every reachable and unreachable corner of the shop and for the chattering, sweet attendants who always seemed to flit around in them. As I grew older, and thankfully grew out of the age where shop attendants felt it appropriate to give me stickers in hopes that I would smile, I grew ever more wary of crafts in general and craft stores in particular. However, having been unable to think of any other way to get the painting framed, I conceded at last to a friend’s suggestion to take it to a craft store where, she assured me, they would easily be able to take care of anything I needed.

With my rolled up canvas tucked securely under my arm I marched into the craft store at a firm brisk pace and brushed off one, two, yea even three sickeningly sweet shop attendants who swarmed to assist me with any holiday needs I may or may not have had. Relieved at having safely arrived at the framing desk at the back of the store I began feeling even more confident at the sight of men dressed in jeans and dirty t-shirts and untidy half pieces of various art frames scattered behind the desk. I approached the counter where I was delighted to be greeted with a short, simple, understandable “What do you need today?”

I rolled out my precious bit of canvas and explained that I wanted it made display-ready. The canvas needed to be affixed in some manner to a frame and covered with glass within a nice frame, preferably one of a dark brownish hue which I believed would accent the background blue nicely. The man stared at my canvas and said nothing. This, I thought, is a vast improvement over chattering with some loquacious but excessively nice person who will use seven hundred fifty words to tell me that nothing can be done. I waited patiently for a minute while I believed the man was giving my project some professional musings. Sometimes my trust is entirely too easily earned.

The man finally opened his mouth and said, “So, you want this stretched?”

“Yes.”

“Like one of these?” He pointed to one of the popular bits of canvas that are wrapped around a wooden frame so that the art bends around the frame itself but has no covering or exterior 
frame. 

“No.” I explained again that I just wanted the art framed but that part of the process would include attaching some sort of support to the canvas to keep it taut.

“So, wait. You want it framed?”

“Yes.”

“Not stretched?”

“Well it needs to be both.” My faith in this deceptively direct request was wavering.

“Both?” 

“Yes.”

He stood up straight and quickly launched into an explanation of the stretching process, how it was very popular to have a piece of canvas, like mine, wrapped around a wooden frame so that the piece of art was either centered or wrapped around the edges. He showed me how there was enough canvas available that I could easily fit it to wooden frame like the one he magicked out from under the counter.

I thought, hey! He’s kinda getting the idea. Now stick what you’ve just described to me behind a piece of glass and inside a nice dark frame and tell me how much to pay! 

“So is that what you want? You want it stretched?”

“I need it framed.”

“Framed.”

“And stretched.”

“So, stretched?”

“And framed.”

“Just framed?”

“And stretched.”

“Not framed? Just stretched?”

Both. Both. For the love of all humanity BOTH! 

We stood on either side of the counter staring at this impossible and destined-to-be-unstretched-and-unframed view of a camel in a Moroccan scene. I wished I was with the camel. I scooped up my canvas and left the store without another word. As I drove down the street on my way back to my bare-walled condo I saw a sign. Aspen Art and Frame. I braked so hard and turned so fast I left skid marks in the road. I marched into the tiny shop and without greeting laid down my bit of canvas and said, “Can you frame this?”

“Yes. We’ll need to stretch and frame it, though, to keep it nice. Ok?” I could have kissed the dear girl. “Would you like to pick out a frame? Maybe something dark to accent the color . . .”

Two weeks later I stood in my dining room admiring the beautiful painting. The simple dark brown frame makes the skyline a deep, rich, glorious blue, and the camel stands contently musing the idea of walking into my kitchen. The framing store even gave me a free hook with which to hang the completed masterpiece.

I have never since stepped foot in one of those craft stores with a framing department.

The Pen and The Hole

It has been a most embarrassing week. I have been under the distinct impression that either I am hallucinating or that some kleptomaniacal soul is stalking me and stealing my pens. On Tuesday last, I had had to change my uniform shirt from my everyday short sleeve to my classy long sleeve in order to work a special event. Two pockets worth of papers, a notebook, a badge, a name tag, a whistle chain, a handcuff key, and a pen were all carefully transferred from one shirt to the other. I even injured myself trying to get the whistle chain off of the shoulder button. With everything safely tucked into my Class A long-sleeve shirt, away I went and worked my special event at the end of which I returned to the office to fill out paperwork only to find that my preferred writing utensil, a black PaperMate Profile 1.4B was missing from the specially designed pen-pocket on my left breast shirt pocket. I thought I must have just mislaid it, something that is an all-too-frequent occurrence. I took up a nearby thumb-click Bic pen and moved on with my life.

At home that night I changed shirts again. Again two pockets worth of papers, the notebook, the badge, the name tag, the whistle and chain, the handcuff key, and the . . . no not the pen. I stood in my bedroom for five full minutes looking for the Bic pen I had rightfully stolen from the office. I retraced my entire afternoon in my head. Filling out the event form; filling out the time sheet; filling out the report for the girl who had come in. Ah! the girl must have taken it. Clearly one thief is as forgetful as another and it is, after all, just a Bic pen. I scrounged around the room and took up another blue thumb-click Bic pen I must have stolen from the officer earlier and tucked it safely in the pocket.

Just hours later I drove to work again where no sooner had I clocked in than I was sent to assist an individual locked out of his own car. Having served several people with such assistance, I went through the routine of informing them I was not a professional locksmith and could not guarantee that by breaking into their vehicle for them I would not damage the inner workings of the car’s mechanisms. The jovial and incessantly chattering youth understood and agreed to sign the waiver I handed to him. But then he asked for a pen. I hardly need mention my annoyance at reaching up and feeling emptiness where my own stylus is supposedly stored. It was inexplicable. I hadn’t had time to lose another pen! All I did was drive to work! I begged a pen off my partner, broke into the car, waved away the exuberant thanks of the jabbering student, and drove off stewing over having lost three pens in as many hours.

In the office again I acquired a cap-top pen, which disappeared before the night was through. I unearthed yet another cap-top pen from a drawer and not only secured it in my pen-pocket but checked on it regularly almost every ten minutes as I walked around. But then I was called to assist so-and-so with thus-and-such and had no sooner arrived on scene and needed the man to fill out a statement form when the pen disappeared yet again. I needn’t weary you with an account of every time my pen went missing. In four days I lost in quick succession, three thumb-clicks, two PaperMate Profiles, seven cap-tops, two Hi-Tecs, a Pilot, and four Bics. Every one simply wasn’t there when it had been mere moments before.

I was desperately clinging to my last hope in a black ballpoint (and a blue gel secretly stowed in a back pocket) when I clocked off work an hour later than my usual two in the morning. I was congratulating myself on having successfully maintained not just one but two pens the entire shift as I climbed into my car to drive home. I tossed my bag into the back seat and started up the car. As I pulled my seat belt across my torso my hand hit against something hard attached to the shoulder strap. I fumbled for a moment trying to untangle the object from where it was catching in the space between the buttons on my shirt. In a single moment life was superbly clear, and I felt superbly ridiculous. There in my car, attached to my seat belt by the same clip all pens use to attach to a shirt pocket, was my friend the black PaperMate Profile 1.4B. The seat belt rides across my chest at the exactly perfect angle to slide beneath the outer clip of the pen and as I unbelt, away goes the pen. I found, when I got out, the entire accumulation of wayward writing utensils congregated in a pile in the crack between the door jamb and the seat’s side. That and three pairs of sunglasses.