There is a memorable scene in Mike Newell’s film ‘Donnie Brasco’. Johnny Depp plays the eponymous undercover FBI agent, who has surfaced to give his colleagues the wiretap recordings of his life in the mob. Fascinated by the lingo of the crew, one of desk bound agents asks about ‘forgeddaboutit’, the second most common word on the tapes. Depp, replete in gangster chic and cooling his forehead with a can of beer, says it can mean, “Go to hell”, “I agree with you”, “I disagree with you” but, sometimes, it just means “forgeddaboutit”.*
In the four years my flatmate and I have shared together, the term, ‘your friend’, has reached a similar status. If forgeddaboutit is a diverse shibboleth in the arena of racketeering, extortion and usury, for us, ‘your friend’, performs the same function in the world of quaffing, pasta-boiling and sink scrubbing.
First deployed, I think, by me, it has proved to be an example of evolution as much as the variation in beak sizes on the Galapagos Islands that prompted Charlie ‘The Beard’ Darwin to crack open the notebooks and scribble his way into history.
Real friends or, mates, often arrive at the flat and sense how ‘The Beard’ must have felt. Sea-sick with excitement, they often flaunt their tonsils when they first hear the shared shorthand. When they need to rush off to suddenly remembered engagements, it is because they have glimpsed the future and they are intimidated. If we occasionally have to eat more of the prepared food due to their unforeseen departure then that is just one belly promoting consequence of our communication evolution.
Originally, The Term, simply referred to ‘the one in the bar that smiles when she serves you lager’. It was unsophisticated and now seems as laughable as eighties’ mobile phones. Its original purpose survived for six months until, in a moment now shrouded in history, my flatmate used it to crack wise. Out with a group of friends, (crucially not ‘your friends’) he took me to one side.
He said “I see your friend is working tonight.”
Dumbfounded and impressed, as there had been no sightings for an age, I managed to splutter, “What? She’s back? You mean the Polish girl?”
He sipped on a beer.
“No”
“I mean the Polish girl’s boyfriend.”
If, to the casual reader, the above does not appear to be the height of comedy, I can only say, that night was not one of easy slumber for Groucho Marx. I expect soon, very soon, to be contacted by Malcolm Gladwell, author of ‘The Tipping Point’.
Since That Moment, The Term has proved Its versatility in the unforgiving theatre that is male conversational bonding. Now, It can mean a person glimpsed on Clapham high street; or her ambling companion, nervously avoiding the cracks in the pavement whilst trying to read her own palm; or someone who may, years ago, served frappacinos in a vaguely flirtatious manner in a venue frequented once on a trip to Basingstoke; or her father; or a lass ‘your dad’ might consider sleeping with (‘your dad’ denotes not, as the converted may have gathered, the other’s father, but a nearby gentleman who, usually, has found himself free from the constraints of bricks ‘n mortar, and whose fingers enjoy the texture of brown paper). It goes on and on and on.
It is a conversational journey. Some critics may suggest Its significance in the flat provides incontestable evidence of arrested development and wonder if we wear swaddling. Those bozos could never be a friend of ours. We may not be living the life where everything we want is a phone call away (unless everything is defined as vegetable-free food) and it may seem like we a couple of schnooks making a pansy-assed attempt to talk-the-talk, but without It, life would be duller, our speech more leaden, our friendship more formal. We’d be a couple of regular Johnny Tescos.
It’s us or them, and if your friend doesn’t understand, forgeddaboutit.
*Not to be confused with a scene from ‘Mickey Blue Eyes’, the title of which is missing, somewhere, another word beginning with F.
In the four years my flatmate and I have shared together, the term, ‘your friend’, has reached a similar status. If forgeddaboutit is a diverse shibboleth in the arena of racketeering, extortion and usury, for us, ‘your friend’, performs the same function in the world of quaffing, pasta-boiling and sink scrubbing.
First deployed, I think, by me, it has proved to be an example of evolution as much as the variation in beak sizes on the Galapagos Islands that prompted Charlie ‘The Beard’ Darwin to crack open the notebooks and scribble his way into history.
Real friends or, mates, often arrive at the flat and sense how ‘The Beard’ must have felt. Sea-sick with excitement, they often flaunt their tonsils when they first hear the shared shorthand. When they need to rush off to suddenly remembered engagements, it is because they have glimpsed the future and they are intimidated. If we occasionally have to eat more of the prepared food due to their unforeseen departure then that is just one belly promoting consequence of our communication evolution.
Originally, The Term, simply referred to ‘the one in the bar that smiles when she serves you lager’. It was unsophisticated and now seems as laughable as eighties’ mobile phones. Its original purpose survived for six months until, in a moment now shrouded in history, my flatmate used it to crack wise. Out with a group of friends, (crucially not ‘your friends’) he took me to one side.
He said “I see your friend is working tonight.”
Dumbfounded and impressed, as there had been no sightings for an age, I managed to splutter, “What? She’s back? You mean the Polish girl?”
He sipped on a beer.
“No”
“I mean the Polish girl’s boyfriend.”
If, to the casual reader, the above does not appear to be the height of comedy, I can only say, that night was not one of easy slumber for Groucho Marx. I expect soon, very soon, to be contacted by Malcolm Gladwell, author of ‘The Tipping Point’.
Since That Moment, The Term has proved Its versatility in the unforgiving theatre that is male conversational bonding. Now, It can mean a person glimpsed on Clapham high street; or her ambling companion, nervously avoiding the cracks in the pavement whilst trying to read her own palm; or someone who may, years ago, served frappacinos in a vaguely flirtatious manner in a venue frequented once on a trip to Basingstoke; or her father; or a lass ‘your dad’ might consider sleeping with (‘your dad’ denotes not, as the converted may have gathered, the other’s father, but a nearby gentleman who, usually, has found himself free from the constraints of bricks ‘n mortar, and whose fingers enjoy the texture of brown paper). It goes on and on and on.
It is a conversational journey. Some critics may suggest Its significance in the flat provides incontestable evidence of arrested development and wonder if we wear swaddling. Those bozos could never be a friend of ours. We may not be living the life where everything we want is a phone call away (unless everything is defined as vegetable-free food) and it may seem like we a couple of schnooks making a pansy-assed attempt to talk-the-talk, but without It, life would be duller, our speech more leaden, our friendship more formal. We’d be a couple of regular Johnny Tescos.
It’s us or them, and if your friend doesn’t understand, forgeddaboutit.
*Not to be confused with a scene from ‘Mickey Blue Eyes’, the title of which is missing, somewhere, another word beginning with F.
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