How do you eat crackers? (Part 2)
A far from comprehensive list of ways to talk normal-like
This will make more sense if you read Part One. Part Two went way long, so I decided to break it into two and put a bonus “Part Three: You Sound like a Fucking Idiot” behind the paywall over the weekend.
Shortly after 9/11, I had this conversation with a classmate (paraphrase).
GUY: Muslims don’t believe in God.
ME: Yes they do.
GUY: No, they believe in Allah.
ME: That means God. It’s a monotheistic religion.
GUY: Then how come they have a different word for it?
Let’s look at some more “right?”’s!!!
Reader and fellow writer Dan Sullivan gave me the perfect example of someone who uses a word two letters off from “right?,” in the exact same way as Thea Riofrancos, way more often than she does, and who couldn’t possibly be less PMC, unless he was, say, a Liberian peasant cowpea farmer:
Ok, but does he really say “alright?” that much?
I’ll note here that while Tarantino clearly favors “alright?,” he does pepper in some “right?”’s. He also makes liberal use of the classic and unfairly maligned “you know?”, and one of my personal favorites, “am I right?” That one has a few permutations.
There’s the emphatic, demanding double down, “am I right or am I right?”, which I’ve heard in person only a few times, always at an above average volume, and usually from Italian Americans, who sometimes manage to pack in three to five “am I right or am I right?”’s into a single tirade.
There’s the “am I right, ladies/fellas?”, a debased “can I get an amen?”-style appeal for applause that was once so ubiquitous in disposable stand-up comedy routines that it’s become shorthand for “hackneyed.” Some comics still invoke it earnestly in hashtags and video titles, but I see it more with the would-be influencers, grubbing for engagement with overly familiar gender-pandering. AMIRIGHTLADIES?!?!?!?!
My favorite though, is the inversion. Cavalier, poetic, and a touch Talmudic in its philosophical construction:
Just an aside, I was originally going to go with the gays and girls for a non-PMC example of “right?” but I couldn’t find a good video, and it seems unfair to cite my own, unverifiable personal experiences—seeing The Wizard of Oz or Pulp at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, wearing a kimono on a houseboat on Fire Island, crying while giving a eulogy for friend’s cat, etc.
But maybe the language and cadence will be recognizable to you. So, if you trust me, here’s a short play, based on a true story. You may notice the gay /girl “right?”’s tend to be passed back and forth in a volley of affirmations; the first one served acts as a traditional “right?”. Depending on inflection, this could mean “are you with me?” or “am I the asshole?” or “am I being insane?”. The reply “right?” acts as a secondary affirmative, validating the first one. And you just keep going. These are “right?”’s in every sense of the concept, but it’s more collaborative. There is no audience, but there are two stars:
FRIEND: So she’s telling me this is about her dog dying, right?
ME: Right. And she only had it for like, six weeks, right?
FRIEND: If that! And now she’s basically moved to Hawaii and she says it’s some kind of grieving thing, and she won’t stop posting about white supremacy, and it’s like, you work at Vogue and your family owns four houses, you know?
ME: Right. But this dog got painless in-home euthanasia, right? And he got to live with a person he bonded with. I mean, the dog didn’t know she’s a shallow narcissist.
FRIEND: Right?!?
ME: Right. So I can see her being sad, but given the fact this dog had a loving home and good life for over a month, and he spent every single last second of his consciousness thinking “wow! It’s love and sunshine from here on out!”, you’d think she could take some solace in having given that to him, right?
FRIEND: Right! And then she compares it to my cat dying, and who I had since he was a kitten, and who lived to be 22!
ME: I know, right? And you brought him from San Francisco to New York and LA! He’s been like, a fixture of your entire adult life.
FRIEND: Right! He was my soulmate! Anyway, she’s actually just mad that she married a guy she doesn’t even like because she thought her wedding was going to get into Vogue but the spread got the axe at the last minute.
ME: Right?!?
The gay “right?” is a joint: puff, puff, pass.
But back to the “right?”’s of a different color.
“Right?” isn’t an American phenomenon. “Innit?” is beautiful example—excellent mouthfeel to that one. Ignore this guy’s weird “Donde esta la biblioteca” foreign language 101 vibes, but note the phrase “not very formal,” a polite and decidedly English euphemism for “working class,” at least in origin.
Here we have a magnificent display of Britishness, a “right?” hat trick, with an “innit,” “dudn’tit,” and a “d’youknowwotImean?,” all from the same guy, all within a mere 15 seconds. It’s a goddamn triple axel.
Back in flyover America, the Northern midwest is famous for its Fargo-esque politeness. When describing their regional dialect, they frequently and self-deprecatingly humble-brag about the charming “dontchaknow,” though as far as I can tell, it’s all but extinct, save for a few elderly lutefisk-eaters.
That said, I can attest that the German/Scandi “Ja?” is still woven into damn near every conversation, usually at the top of sentences. Seriously, it’s “ja” this and “ja” that, as if they’re trying to preemptively agree with you, and head off any potential conflict at the pass with their deceptively aggressive Midwestern amiability.
They’re just “checkin’ in,” making sure you know we’re all on the same team, just in case you were worried.
I feel like you hear “ok?” thrown around no matter where you go, but never from someone talking to an elder, unless that elder is senile. “Ok?” seems to be the ideal “right?” to use when talking to someone your own age, or someone intellectually deficient or compromised—a child you want to pay attention, a confused drunk, a crazy person that needs calming, someone with dementia that you’re trying not to scare, or just an idiot you’re trying not to lose your patience with.
“We’re going to put on our coats for recess, ok? Then we’re going to have snack time, ok? Then we’re gonna’ do DEI and the 1619 Project and Gender Lessons before nap time, ok?”
I suspect the “Ok?” comes off less menacing than the authoritarianism of direct orders, like ”Put on your coats. It’s recess, then snacks, then we learn about the War of Northern Aggression.”
(Bonus “You know” at the end.)
There are more, of course, and I’ve already been sent a few foreign “right?”’s, and some body language and physical gestures that fit firmly into the “right?” category. But you’re never really done with any piece of writing, you just have to decide when to stop. And I like knowing that I’ll never learn them all.
I’m not saying that every time someone says “right?” (or whatever they say that means the exact same thing as “right?”), they’re doing it the same way, or for the same reasons. Why would they be? We’re all constantly having different conversations, with different people, in entirely different situations. And the motives behind our words vary wildly, from moment to moment, and person to person. That’s just what talkin’ is; there’s a whole human being attached to that mouth.
But each one of those subconscious, rhetorically inquisitive little verbal tics—now so pervasive in our speech that almost no one ever even notices them—floats in same constellation, softening the glaring light of all those lonely, pleading questions that come with trying to say something:
“Can you hear me?”
“Are you listening?”
“Do you understand me?”
“Do you believe what I’m saying?”
“Do you believe that I believe what I’m saying?”
“Do you know that I’m listening to you?”
“Do you believe that I want to?”
“Do you know how scared I am that everyone wants me to shut up right now—or worse—that no one would even notice if I did?”
“God… hope so.”
“Right?” is is the dust born out of those questions, even when it’s just a habit, or an insincere, vestigial piece of bourgeois etiquette, a floating signifier of an attempt to relate to another human being.
Not every iteration is going to be music to your ears, but you don’t hate the tic. At least, you don’t hate what it means. You hear different translations of it it all the time, without even noticing. It only sticks in your craw when you hear it in a certain language, not because “right?” is inherently coercive and condescending, but because so many of the people who say it in that particular tongue are.
Earlier this year, eight candidates for Democratic National Committee leadership held a televised forum, just before the vote on a new DNC Chair. The moderating MSNBC anchors kicked off the proceedings with a kind of loyalty oath:
"How many of you believe that racism and misogyny played a role in VP Harris's defeat?" MSNBC anchor Jonathan Capehart, a co-moderator of the event, asked the candidates.
All eight contenders quickly shot up their hands in agreement, with Ben Wikler, one of the frontrunners, narrowly beating other candidates to the punch. Quintessa Hathaway, the only black woman in the race, ended up raising both hands in response to Capehart’s query.
"That’s good, you all pass," Capehart said after the show of hands
There’s nothing particularly remarkable about eating crackers, and any difference in the ways we eat them are pretty minor, and altogether arbitrary—there are only so many ways to do it, and the result is pretty much always the same.
That said, I’ll never begrudge anyone a little irrational, petty nit-picking. I don’t like their accent either, but I know that it’s not how they say it that bothers me, it’s the reminder of them.
Because they really do think they fuckin’ own the place.
Y’know?