When Andrew left this strange place on Friday, he came to my house for the night. My dad asked him about his week, and Andrew began babbling nonsense.
“We wake up at 4 a.m. every day for PT, and our PT instructors make us stop every half-mile for pushups. Shock Sunday was the worst though. It hasn’t been that bad since Shock Sunday…”
My dad nodded along like he understood, and I later defined these terms for him.
(PT means Physical Training – Andrew says everyone knows this, and maybe you, anonymous reader, did know this; but my dad and I did not, so Andrew, you are incorrect.)
(Oh, and Shock Sunday is their cute name for the first day at The Academy, which is supposedly very challenging and, I assume, somewhat shocking.)
Over dinner, I asked Andrew more about his week. He told me about the other guys going through training, and he told me they’ve been running around with fake guns catching fake robbers. He also told me that every morning after PT, they have Chow.
For some reason – probably because I am so cultured – I thought this was a foreign word, like ‘Ciao.’ I thought maybe it was their fancy name for yoga. (Because all police officers should know yoga before hitting the streets.)
Annoyed, I asked Andrew to define his terminology.
Andrew: Chow, you know, like food. When we go to the cafeteria to eat, we call it ‘Chow.’
Well, Andrew, allow me to remind you that we here in Normal People World call it breakfast.
After Andrew and I finished dinner – excuse me, Chow – we went back to my house and watched Will and Grace. Somewhere between the first and fifth episode we watched, Andrew’s exhaustion overtook him, and he lost his ability to move.
Andrew: Sam, will you get me some water?
Sam, making a big production over this (yes, sometimes I’m a diva): Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know you’ve had such a rough week with all your PT … and your Shock Sundays … and your chow.
These aren’t the only terms I’ve added to my vocabulary this week, however. My friend Liz called me the other day, and at some point in our riveting conversation, she mentioned that she was about to tag me in a Facebook status. I asked what the status was about, and she started rambling about Harry Potter … while I yawned and daydreamed about something more interesting.
She explained the Harry Potter status trend circulating Facebook. (I assume it’s circulating Facebook, although the only person I’ve seen participate is Liz.) The instructions are to look at your list of friends (under your profile picture) and assign these friends to Harry Potter characters according to this list provided by … Dumbledore himself, I guess.
Your first friend is, maybe, your Gryffindor pal. The second might be your Slytherin enemy. Your third friend is your Dark Lord.
Lucky me, I was assigned to be a follower of the Dark Lord. … But I plan to request a promotion to the Dark Lord after I get a few years of experience under my belt.
When Liz finished explaining, I rolled my eyes and made fun of her, resulting in the following conversation:
Liz: Sam, don’t be boojy.
Sam: … Liz, you can’t just make up words.
Liz: I’m not making up that word!
Sam: Yeah, okay.
Liz: It means, you know, like, don’t think you’re too good for something – in this case, Harry Potter character assignments.
Sam: Right. … I’m still not convinced that’s an actual word, but okay, I’ll try to refrain from being what you call ‘boojy.’
Liz: You know how, like, in the Middle Ages or something, they used to refer to the upper class as the bourgeoisie?
Sam: Oh, okay. Well, thanks for teaching me a new word. That’s wondy.
hilar!
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