ME TALK FUNNY?
So my friend Jim Kelly - the accountant, not the quarterback - stopped by the other day to say hello and to deride my writing style. He claimed it was just "good-natured ribbing," but I'm insightful enough to know when I'm being criticized. He was using words like "pedantic" and "sedentary," and like I've said before, when people start using SAT words, I kind of stop listening. But long story short, Jim, a fellow Texan, felt like perhaps I was abandoning my Texan roots in favor of a more elevated writing style.

His solution to what he saw as my scribing shortcomings was to provide me with a book of "Texan-isms." The text in question is entitled "Whut Makes You Thank Teksuns Tawk Funny?" The title, interestingly enough, drives my computer's spellcheck absolutely bonkers, but I digress. This "dictionary" was written by a gentleman who felt like others couldn't understand what he was trying to say and, rather than blame them for their inability to discern his meaning, he wrote a book for them. We Texans are nice like that.

As of this writing, I'm down in Charleston, South Carolina, for the weekend. I understand you folks up there in Nantucket are having a smattering of wind and a little rain, and you've got my condolences. But being in Charleston is not without its own pitfalls. Case in point, I'm glad I've got my Texan dictionary, because, you see, there are certain words and phrases that you can use pretty much anywhere in the South and still get by. In fact, once you cross the Mason-Dixon Line and find yourself in the "Saowth," there are some universally necessary words. One such word is "mona." For the non- Texan-speaking amongst us, I'll give you the definition from my handydandy new Texan dictionary:

mona- used with the first person, singular, to state what one intends to do. "Ah mona git mahsef uh brand new fishin poe." (going to; see "gonna" or "gunna" for second- and third-person).

And for the phonetically challenged amongst us, I'll translate the above: "I'm going to get myself a brand new fishing pole." See how easy it is to speak Texan?

Speaking of "brand new fishin poes," we Texans aren't alone in our having a language all our own. Anglers have their own secret code (not to be confused with the opposite of hot when speaking Texan).

Ah dohn care wut yew wanna cawl ut, whare Ah come frum, that thar's a segue.

Friends and neighbors, it's the God's honest truth. Anglers everywhere have their own little language they speak. It's kind of like twins talking to each other. We're saying one thing, but meaning another thing altogether, a thing that is only understandable to those "in the know."

Now, the angling community will take away my membership card if I give away too much of the lingo, so I've got to tread lightly here in terms of how much info I give away. But I can give you non-fishing folks a little insight into the angler's mind by way of translation of what they're saying.

Let's say, hypothetically, you're talking to a fisherman and he tells you that he hooked a "forty-inch striped bass" when he was fishing "off the west jetty" using a "red-and-white pencil popper," but the fish "threw the hook at the last minute" and got away. There's a translation here that, to the uninitiated, might be unrecognizable at first glance. What is really being said here is actually a combination of a few things. The first part of the translation goes something along the lines of the following: "I was fishing out at the Miacomet Rip using a black Bomber." Now, the part about the "forty-inch striped bass" is actually more often than not translated as "a fish that, if you stretched it out with a couple of tension springs, might go twenty-eight inches." And the dénouement there at the end where he's telling you about throwing the hook is a little tricky, but usually comes out as "swam past my plug and gave me the fish-equivalent of the middle fin and swam by without really paying any attention to the plug at all and I had no hope at catching the fish and I should consider myself fortunate for even having seen it."

Anglers as a population, much like Texans, are notorious exaggerators. Did anybody catch the coded language there? "Notorious exaggerators," kids, is actually code for "ridiculously big liars." It's pretty much in their collective DNA. They're hard-wired to mislead, because they feel like their own "secret fishing spot" is theirs alone, and they don't want anybody else honing in on it. So in other words, it's not so much that it's their fault; they're just relying on an inherent instinct to protect what they see as theirs. And what better way to ensure security than by using a security-laden code language? So the next time you hear a fishing story that sounds a little too good to be true, get out your little Uncle Andrew secret decoder ring and get down to the truth of the matter. Just try to avoid a Texan fish story when you're first starting out, because that Texan-speak adds a whole new degree of difficulty to an already tough enough job.

Now if you'll excuse me, Ah got a reeyul powerful hungur lahk nuthin else, and Ah needs tuh see 'bout ettin' me sum lunch.

Tight lines. I