Having a Fuckbrain™ is curious. I’m always fascinated by the way my Tourette’s Syndrome makes me obsess over words. Indeed, quite recently, one aspect of it has been getting “worse.” You see, as I’ve mentioned before, certain words sound
right to me and some sound
wrong.
A right word is gravel. Gravel is fabulous, magnificent, fun to say, and makes my brain feel good, practically giving me a good physical sensation as well. Crumbly is another good word, especially when compared with the last name of my friend Wes.
Crumbly Baumgartner. Say it out loud. No, seriously, do it. Tell me that rhythm isn’t awesome.
In addition, although most people with Tourette’s don’t have the “random swearing” thing, we certainly do seem to swear far more often than the average human being. It’s often so seamlessly incorporated into my sentences, though, that most people don’t seem to think that anything is terribly out of order. At least, that’s what I like to tell myself. All I know is that my brain LIKES swearing, and wants me to do it whenever I can.
Another thing my brain likes to do is arbitrarily assume names to people that aren’t their own names. For example, when speaking to people—whether I know them or not—I often default to giving them honorifics, like Captain, or Sergeant, or Admiral, or Doctor, and so on. My friends refer to the changes—which happen all the time—as receiving field promotions or demotions.
What started as a joke—using “Dad names” like Champ, Buddy, Pal, Tiger—has been inching into regular useage, and of course old stand-bys like “monkeykisser” or “junkie” and so on still get thrown out literally without a thought. Sometimes my brain actually generates new names/titles for people without my knowing it. For example, the other day I told somebody to “stop acting like such a shitnickel.”
I have no idea where that came from. The words get out before they even make it to my conscious mind.
But the true victim of my word freakouts? Lovely Wife Sara. You see, my brain decided years ago that she needed nicknames. And usually not cutesy nicknames like other people get.
Nope, my wife spent six months being called “McGee.” Where did it come from? Dunno, especially since she’s Polish. After McGee came one of the oddest ones ever.
Pants.
I started calling my wife “Pants.”
“Good morning, Pants, do you want some coffee?”
Best of all was that it started out as being prounounced “pahnts” with a little POP of the p at the beginning.
Naturally, my brain then converted the two into Pants McGee. Both of those are things that my brain likes saying, so maybe that’s why they got assigned to my wife.
Most recently? Beans. Which became MC Beans. And a few months ago my brain decided that I would start adding plurals to everything, like “I went to the library to get some bookses, then I grabbed some gasolines for the car.”
Summarily, Sara became MC Beanses.
Look, I don’t come up with this stuff. Okay, I guess I do, but it’s not a part of me that I ever actually get to speak to.
The other day, Sara actually asked me if I could call her Sara for that day. It’s kind of depressing to think that you’ve been doing something that is vaguely aggravating your wife literally without realizing it.
Lots of words and word obsessions come and go, sometimes staying for a while and then leaving, maybe coming back later, but the seemingly random assignation of honorifics, nicknames, and new swearwords will never go away. Which, to be honest, I'm totally cool with.
Remember, I have no sense of shame or embarassment, and I love to help people to--as much as is possible--understand what it's like in my brain.
Feel free, therefore, to ask questionses, my monkeys.
benjamin
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eyeslikesugar, it seems that I had a hard time narrowing three of your FIVE QUESTIONS down to a single answer. That having been said, I really liked them.
