Townie Talk
When I was 22, I visited Switzerland. Specifically, a city called Fribourg that was about the size of my hometown.
It was distinctly Swiss, with brown chalets, hilly green pastures, and the livestock that brayed and bahhed at us as we milled around town. Even someone who’s never so much as done a Google Images search of Switzerland would be able to guess that we were on Heidi’s territory.
I arrived on my 22nd birthday (July 6, 2010). The lead counselor at the children’s camp I was volunteering baked me a chocolate cake with candles stuck in the middle. As the wax melted, along with my heart, the children sang, “Zum Geburtstag viel Glück!” (same melody as Happy Birthday).
Fribourg was in a German-speaking canton of Switzerland, but it wasn’t precisely German that I was hearing. At least, not the German I had attempted to teach myself in the three months since I booked my ticket. I was told that it was, “Swiss-German,” and only intelligible to those born here. “It’s our secret language,” they told me, with smugness and pride. It would be foreign even to the ears of a native Berliner nursed on Goethe and Schiller.
While there, I felt the pain of exclusion, the yearn of exclusion, as I listened to their esoteric chatter. (My pitiful, “Wie gehts?” and “Guten nacht!” went to go slump in a corner). They were so lively and kind, but this language was an insurmountable moat between us.
When I returned to New York, I stewed on the tragic romance of not fully understanding my new friends. Then I realized, I have my own version of it:
Townie Talk.
Yes. The sacred patois of we, the natives, of our hometown. Our rust-belt, upstate New York, Polish-Irish-Slovak-Italian-descended, bleary-weathered, rainy, doughy-pizza loving, town of Binghamton, N.Y.
Since IBM went bust in ’86, we’ve become a mini Detroit — but Cliff Eastwood doesn’t do our voiceovers. We wouldn’t trust him anyway, because he didn’t go to elementary school here.
My hometown, like Fribourg, is home to > 50,000 people. If you’re reading this, in all likelihood you’re from there (as least, that’s what the demographics of my website seem to suggest). If you’re not, then welcome! I’ll try to explain us to you. But I can’t explain our language. And, I love you, and I’m sorry, but you’ll never be able to speak it. Townie Talk is our Swiss-German.
I went to school at Binghamton University, where I became best friends with a girl from Long Island. I recruited her into my townie world, bringing her to places BU kids don’t usually go. She loved our town; totally got the unnameable appeal. She told me after a year of friendship that she thought she could fake being a townie.
I blinked at her; Yoda to an overly confident Jedi. “Sooo where did you go to high school?” I tested her.
“Um, I transferred here senior year!” she invented. “From Long Island.”
I patted her arm in consolation. “No,” I said gently. “No one does that. Never once has that happened.” She would be deemed as fake as a round meatball at Little Venice; a Spiedie Fest in February.
A CIA operative could not fake out a townie. We know ourselves too well. If they tried to claim they grew up in our town, we would smoke them out with our preliminary, “so where did you go to elementary school??” (For you foreigners: that’s our cute way of asking what part of town you’re from). If their cover was sophisticated enough to have a school ready, we would follow up with a, “ohh, who were your teachers? Did you have Mrs. X? What about Mrs. Y? My Aunt taught with her, they say her husband isn’t doing so well.” (*stage whisper* “it’s pancreatic…”) Your street name at birth would also be addressed. We wanna know what terrain your training wheels canvassed; if you went to Cavanaugh’s or Nannery’s or the South Side Hess as your childhood candy store.
And forget about high school. A townie is verified by their graduation year like their Social Security #. A true townie will be able to cough up some names from whatever high school you attended: “CV? ME? UE? SV? BHS? Before or after it was Central? That was ’82, right? Oh, you’re from Vestal?? Fancy! Where did you go to college, Scranton? Villanova?” (Psst: this is somewhat of a status symbol, because, while remaining close to home in neighboring Pennsylvania, it shows you can still afford out-of-state tuition. Your parents likely own a lumberyard, or have an MD after this name).
We are all 2.5 degrees of separation from each other, and it brings us deep comfort. As a hobby, we like to pinpoint each other for further vivisection. Topics like, who you’ve dated and what your personal scandals are will be addressed later, after you’ve left. (Every townie has a mental encyclopedia of their fellow townsfolk’s DWIs, DUIs, deaths, divorces, diseases, and other Midwestern taboos).
This week, I did some quality “townie talk” with a sprightly lady who has been here her whole life (all seven decades of it). Her maiden name means something in our town: your eyebrows will raise, but you’ll cover it under your courteous, “oh nice! Of course, I know who your brother is. I’ve eaten lord knows how many slices in his pizza shop!”
I ate up our talk like a good shepherd’s pie on Parade Day; a plate of pierogi on Ukie Days. When I told her I was BHS Class of ’06, she chirruped the names of three of my classmates, related to her by marriage. I chittered back to her that yes, I knew them. (“Now X and Y are first cousins, right? Were their parents brother and sister? Because I know X’s middle name was Y’s last name.”) She knew the Hot One in my Class, and we giggled over him like schoolgirls. (“Soo nice, too!”) I had a few more subterranean factoids on Mr. Hot, or course, but we townies edit. We play nicely with each other’s secrets. You spill your guts to the cashier, next thing you know, you’re getting a late-night message over Facebook from someone with 382 mutual friends, demanding you explain yourself.
I’ll go back to Switzerland and Paris; I’ll visit Cyprus and Bratislava and Morocco; I’ll see as many inches of this world as time and money permits. But nowhere will I roam where I’ll be so known; be such a sociologist of a concise time and space. My town is my creed; I take it with me wherever I go. It’s the filter through which I view the world: friendly, folksy, hungry, in need of a sweater. I’m nosy about the world because of this town.
When I visit Simone de Beauvoir’s grave, I’ll whisper to whoever’s next to me, “Now, did she and Sartre go to high school school together? What class were they?” These petty annals are our way of knowing the world; grouping its chaos into a semblance of sense; forcing the unfamiliar to be friendly.
My first book of essays, ‘Broke Babe in a Basement,’ is coming June 2022! Click here to reserve your signed copy!
