"What did we learn today Jessica?"
"That I'm fat?
"No we already knew that. What do we do with fat people?"
"We punch them."
We all have them, those "you had to be there" stories. And inside jokes. The worst part is when the perfect opportunity comes along to use the inside joke in an hilarious way and no one gets it because none of the people who are on the inside of the inside joke are present and you have to lamely explain why it's funny and that never makes it better. Sometimes if you try to explain the joke they might stop thinking you're insane but then again, sometimes that just makes it worse. Lame.
On the other side of the spectrum, when you're the only one in the group who doesn't get the inside joke and you feel like or a loser. The funny thing is we all know how funny and wonderful inside jokes are and yet.... when other people are obviously sharing an inside joke that you don't understand you unavoidably think, "I'm surrounded by idiots"
Speaking of movie quotes, I've decided that movie/tv shows are public private jokes (yes I know that I have been calling them "inside" jokes not "private" jokes but "public inside jokes" just doesn't sound as paradoxical. And paradoxes, they make life more colorful.) But think of it! movie quotes are just like a private joke you share with your friends only with the added risk of not always knowing who those friends are! On the one hand you could be in a group of people who have never seen that show that you're quoting and then they will look at you like you're an idiot, or they know that show and love it but don't love it as much as you do obviously because they don't know that quote and then they feel like idiots, or only a part of the group knows it in which case each half of the group will think that the other half are idiots!
Idiot is not a very nice word, perhaps we can just call them "you uncultured swine!" Now go back and replace every "idiot" in the last paragraph with "you uncultured swine!" no, I will not edit it myself, (what do you think I am someone who just edits my paragraphs?")
Sometimes inside jokes die. There's never a funeral, and you never know when it happens because inside jokes only die when you forget them. It's kind of like "the game" you can't think about it or you lose. (mwahahaha!) Only it's the other way around, if you try to have a moment of silence for an inside joke that has passed on....you win! because it's not dead at all! It lives in you.............. . I wonder though, how many inside jokes have died without me noticing. A dead inside joke is the sign of a group of friends that no longer exists. At least not in the same form. I have been in groups of friends that later became some-people-who-occasionally-check-up-on-each-other. It's a graveyard for inside jokes.
I think in the end inside jokes are a sign of love. Inside jokes take time spent together, respect, comfort, and affection. Which are all things that spell love.
On another note why does the English language only have one word for love? There are so many different kinds of love! They are so different too! You say, " I love you" to your brother and then you say "I love you" to the one you love (not literally to him, you just direct it to him but actually he can't hear you because he's far away and isn't ready to know that you love him anyway so you just put it out there in the universe and hope that someday you can actually say it to him) and they mean two totally different things.
Maybe language itself is just one big inside joke that you can only understand if "you were there." The words we use never mean what the dictionary says they mean. They mean whatever we think they mean. Words have memories, and connotations, and connections attached to them. Sometimes though you find someone and you make all the same memories and draw all the same connections, all words have the same connotations and you understand each other because you are actually speaking the same language. That's love --when you can say "love" and it means the same thing to both of you. Sometimes you don't even have to say it out loud.
