Ramblin’ Prose

This one’s for you Grams…

So, we’re talking about bad habits one evening, and Camille is telling us about a boy in her class. “He does this,” she says. Standing, knees bent, pelvis thrust forward, she puts one hand over her privates and makes a kneading gesture that would do Julia Child proud.

As we go into various stages of hysterics, she shouts, “And he does THIS, too!” She reaches for the backside and mimics the kneading again.

“Yes, sweetie, all guys do that. Most just don’t do it in public. Grams used to call it cuppin’ and gougin’,” I said.

At the family trucking company, where my Mom ran the office and I worked as a summer job, we actually cataloged different styles of C&G:

• There were the furtive ones who tried to pass it off by adjusting their waistband and letting that hand wander down there for a quick cuddle.
• There were the absent-minded strokers, who didn’t even seem to realize they were doing it.
• And there were the unabashed gougers, who got on in there for a thorough exam.

It started out being offensive, melded into annoying, and then became downright hilarious — once we came up with the proper term for it. It worked then. It works now…

Cuppin’ and gougin’.