Dialects

In the car with the small male who requests the hockey match on the radio, ma obliges, as I listened it was delivered in language a code that tripped me up. What’s a PK? Translation from the back seat. Which team is this? Why did that just happen? Small male patiently obliges. The talk turns to play-off hockey and how this is a different kind of play (akin to tiger mauling I deduced) to normal hockey. Perplexed we carry on up the hill. In my head I am thinking in another language, but the unfamiliar dialect continues to draw my attention and prompt questions. Small male speculates. Phone rings when something occurs in match of significance. It is Tall male to weigh in with the news to small male.

We are on our way to mama’s extra gymnastics session. A last minute decision.

Initially there’s only one woman throwing beautiful layaways and somersaults, (new language, my dialect) while two men are stretching. Again and again the woman peacefully tumbles. Then something happens. We’re talking about planes and ash when she hits the ground. The language/dialect changes tone, over content, to analysis.

We all disperse. There’s few. An hour and there’s more. Then more. The more divide into trampoline, the floor has swollen full of martial arts (all men) and break dancers. There are 3 others who are doing something with the bars on the wall. There’s the solitary woman, the tumbler, whose now on bars. The physical activity is in three dialects. The bouncers, the twisters and the outnumbered straight gymnasts.

Back in the car, the match resumes. The language re-explodes. We listen, talk, decide. The evening will yet be full of even more dialects, strange and surprising, and some as familiar as the handle on a cup.