Catch phrase

I heard someone say “wicked” the other day and it made me smile. “Wicked” is one of those words from my childhood - the 80s and early 90s – that never gets used anymore. Like “rain forest” and “recycle.”

I want to start my own catch phrase that will catch on and sweep the nation for a brief period, only to appear hopelessly dated in the years directly following. My first idea was “Get me a juice box, beyotch!” but then I remembered that such a phrase wouldn’t qualify, because I didn’t invent it. I copied that, as well as my political views and personality, from a movie I saw.

I think I’ve been unsuccessful at generating a catch phrase because I don’t talk to people very much. I communicate mostly in grunts, nods and glares, saving most of my intelligible messages for writing. Maybe I could learn sign language and start my catch phrase that way – through a weird finger symbol.

Oh, I know! I could wrap my wring finger around my thumb, then twist my wrists upside down while flapping my palms back and forth. This phrase would be PSL (Phil Sign Language) for, “Get the hell out and don’t let the bead curtain hit you on the way out, beyotch!” There’s a problem with this one, too, genius though it is, because I never stopped to consider whether or not the signal already means something else. Every hand symbol you can think of is probably already taken, because every worldwide language has their own sign language. What’s up with that? What is it with the deaf that they have to be so provincial, and can’t cross international borders to agree on a universal sign language. I mean, Europe agreed on the Euro, and the AFL agreed to become a part of the NFL.

Sign languages aren’t solely restricted to nationalities. I remember back in elementary school all the girls were able to chat with each other constantly throughout the day without passing notes, through only the use of their hands. I could never decipher what they were saying, only that the messages often concluded with the girls pointing at me and giggling. I bet at least some of them said, “That guy smells.” Which was true, because I didn’t start showering regularly until seventh grade. Who knows, they might have actually been talking about how hot they thought I was. If I could quantum leap, I would go back with a linguist to determine if indeed that’s what they were saying. Then maybe I could repeat my life for a 60-minute episode and get a whole lot more action in fourth grade than I did the first time around. And introduce "Don't have a cow, man" before Bart Simpson did.