The Connective Pieces: Inside Jokes Matter
August 9, 2024
Writer: Patsy Coleman
Editor: Gretchen Quill
One thing to know about my group of friends from home is that pop culture competency and keeping up with extremely niche references is crucial if you want to have a seat at our table, as inside jokes are essential to our vocabulary. If I can’t remember that one bathroom fight in middle school, or a quote from a Rebel Wilson red-carpet interview, I might as well just leave the hangout altogether. It’s exhausting, yet it’s my favorite part of my hometown friend group. Be it years-old references to elementary school or a word we made up last week, the way we communicate shows just how deeply rooted our relationships are. To me, inside jokes and references represent everything a friendship with someone can be, almost like an intangible photograph, it brings us back to some of the greatest moments and times. How is it that a word or phrase can change the way we feel within a second?
For my home friend group, one new phrase I particularly love is EGOT. For those who don’t know what the actual term means, it is an acronym given to those who have earned an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony, the big four designations of entertainment. How we instead like to use the term is to describe a person, place, or thing, that is extremely dramatic, typically in the negative sense. If someone is being EGOT, we mean they are being SO dramatic that they have won all four major categories of drama. Examples would be someone ordering fajitas at a Mexican restaurant, a person saying “I needed this” halfway through a hangout, a neck pillow on a plane, James Corden, and someone using the word “imperative” when they participate in class. It has gotten to the point where if something dramatic happens I repeat “EGOT” to myself, and immediately smile thinking of my friends. I feel connected to them just with a thought, a thought so “meaningless” as a fake phrase. But to me, these inside ways we communicate mean the world.
With every group and relationship in my life, I always promote the value of an inside joke, a repeating bit, especially in college where you are constantly surrounded by people all the time, there truly are thousands of hours spent together with your friends. This may be quoting scenes from Goodwill Hunting in a Boston accent at any convenient point. This may be always trying to get a DJ to play Downtown by Macklemore or Take Me to Church by Hozier. This could even be referencing the play-by-play of that one party first semester freshman year that was just filled with amazing content. I love nicknames, fake words, phrases we beat to the ground, and anything that is simple and makes me remember the people I love. Jokes and bits are the unique connective pieces that I will never forget from my friends at any stage of life.
I think the incredible relationships I have at home showed me the importance of surrounding yourself with the right people. Everyone says that I know, but what I mean is putting myself in spaces full of laughter and openness. Weekends are more fun with your group of friends– where the night starts with making a list of bits to accomplish, and days feel better when they end with people who have a personal nickname for you. the people you can have eccentric inside jokes and references with are the ones that make you feel the most comfortable, as these jokes represent connection and everything that is unique and special about the relationship. Cherish the jokes that won’t make sense to the rest of the world, because they are intangible and will always bring you right back to some of the best moments in time.
