Tags

Because no one wants to read about how I spent my weekend (Football, 10 hours of Halo 2, and The OC. Ha! You read about it anyway!) I instead present an old story that illustrates a current feature of my life.

Once upon a time, I was a very quiet person. Truth be told, I am still now, only it seems less likely, because whenever I'm around people that I know I tend to ramble on and on and on. But back as a freshman in college, I didn't know anyone, so I was pretty quiet.

At the same time, I was also incredibly sarcastic, y'know, as you are at 18. The only problem was, I didn't quite have the tone of voice down to indicate that I was, in fact, being sarcastic. So for about 11 months, people would constantly question me: "Are you serious?"

About everything.

Roommate: "Where do you go every night?"
Jason: "Oh you know, I fight crime in Highland Park. Vigilante style."
Roommate: "Seriously?"
Jason: "I go to band, dude."

Other Roommate: "Man, why are you in the band? It looks tiring."
Jason: "Mostly for all the cocaine. It's pretty much everywhere over there."
OR: "No way! Are you serious?"
Jason: "Yeeeeeeah."
OR: "Seriously?"
Jason: "No."
OR [sadly]: "Oh."

Eventually this became a huge problem. So much so that when attempts to correct the issue vocally failed --

(OR: "Sound more sarcastic." Jason: "Like this?" OR: "No, more sarcastic." Jason: "Your words mean nothing to me." OR: "Are you being serious?")

-- we had to move on to visual aids.

So for a period of over a year and a half, any time that I said something that was meant in a sarcastic way I would make the peace sign with both hands and then turn them 90 degrees towards my chest. These were known as Sarcasm Tags.

(Because the peace signs were intended to look like HTML tags, only in finger form:

My hands = "<" ">"
Because I am a dork.
...
...
...
Shut up, you don't know me!)

In any case, these became a staple of my everyday life. Anyone who was around me for an extended period of time was aware of them and it made conversations much easier. Phone calls were a whole other issue, but things were okay. Eventually I grew out of the tags, as I developed something of a reasonable approximation of a sarcastic tone. But it was an unconscious part of my life for a long time.

Why bring this up now, you ask? Because all of a sudden, lately I've been using them again, without realizing it. Like, I'll be talking to some random person who doesn't even know me at all, and they'll be all "What's with the gang signs?" Or in the case at work "You waving in airplanes there, buddy?"

I'm really not sure how to stop, because it's a completely unconscious action, but I better figure it out soon, before I'm carted off to the mental facility. Or shot by a rival gang.