Tracy and I have so many different rituals around saying hello and goodbye. Almost all of them in text or IM.
I was just thinking about this the other day. It was morning, and I was on my way to work, and, per usual, I decided to pull out my iPhone and text Tracy a message. And I thought to myself, “Which greeting do I feel like, today?” In other words, which one accurately represented how I felt right now?
Because there are various combinations of words and punctuation. If I gave the wrong one, she’d have the wrong impression. Can’t have that.
Here are the various ways to say “hello” or start the day off, in order from least enthusiastic to most:
- Hey.
- Hi.
- Mornin’.
- Hey!
- Hi!
- Yo! / To!*
- Mornin’!
- Good morning! (rare)
* My iPhone auto-corrects the word “Yo” and replaces it with “To”. After a while, I eventually gave up changing it back and the word “To!” has become its effective equivalent. I even use it verbally now.
But there’s more. If, on a weekend, one of us takes a nap, we have the greeting “G’nap!” which can be used both as a wish for the other person to have a good nap, and a warning to the other person that we will be napping for the next hour or two. Tracy invented that one.
At the end of our work day, we’ve devised a shorthand call-and-response for when it’s time for us to leave. Using our enterprise IM system, we send:
Call: eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
Response: ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!
Whoever thinks of it first gives the first one, and the only proper response is the second one. The lack of initial capitalization is important, as is the correct number of exclamation points (Tracy doesn’t always follow the punctuation rules but she’s still my best friend). Also, I tend to send enough letters to flow over onto a second line.
The “eeeeee!!!” is short for “Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!”
The “oooooo!!!” is short for “You, tooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!”
Whoever notices first that it’s 4:20 (nearly always PM not AM) will text the other “4:20!” or some variant. The standard response is “Dude!” although sometimes we will embellish on that, especially if we’re late in responding by more than 2 minutes. I, personally, started this one because neither Tracy nor I are potheads. At all. No, seriously. In fact, I’ve lost opportunities to hang out with strippers because my automatic response to “Hey, do you smoke pot?” is “No”, even when it’s being asked by a beautiful naked woman. If that doesn’t convince you that I don’t smoke pot, nothing will.
And then, of course, every night before we go to bed, we send “G’night!” to each other. Often also adding “…bestie!”
Which, of course, is short for “best friend”. Which we are.