Pulling a Rog
If I said someone was pulling a Rog, there are probably six people in the world who would know exactly what I meant. My brother Paul and I started using it in college because of our dad, Roger. We noticed most often he had this habit at dinner. My mom might say, “Dad and I are going downtown to Henrici’s for our anniversary next weekend.” Paul and I would say that’s great, ask what anniversary it was, and the conversation would move on to something completely different.
Five or ten minutes later my dad would say, “Mom and I are going downtown to Henrici’s for our anniversary next weekend.” It wouldn't be exactly word for word, but close enough. Paul and I would look at each other. He had just told us this. We started calling it Pulling a Rog.
There was nothing wrong with my dad. He just repeated things. I took Pulling a Rog to college with me and it caught on with my friends. My dad didn't have to be anywhere around. Somebody at a party would repeat something somebody else had said fifteen minutes earlier and one of us would call it. “ROG.”
We eventually came up with the Re-Iterog. A Rog was when you repeated something somebody else had already said. A Re-Iterog was when you repeated yourself. Almost an unforgivable offense. We probably did both as much as everybody else, but catching somebody else doing it was far more enjoyable.
We had other names for things. My friends and I apparently spent a decent amount of college standing around bars watching people and deciding certain things needed names. Not important things. Completely useless things.
There was the Purse-Strap Boob Separator. PSBS for short. We'd be standing at a bar or sitting at a table and a woman would walk by with one of those small purses slung diagonally across her body. The narrow strap would run between her breasts and accentuate both sides. We were college guys and gals. We noticed. We felt this was done purposefully. So we also decided it required a name and an acronym.
Then there was the purse pile. Four to eight women would decide to dance and all the purses would go down in a pile right in the middle of the dance floor. Not on a chair. Not under a table. Right there on a floor covered with spilled beer, cigarette ashes and whatever else people had been walking through all night.
Then they would form a circle and dance around the purses. Nobody was officially guarding anything, but the circle apparently created some sort of security system. The women danced, the purses stayed in the middle and nobody crossed the perimeter. It looked to us like people dancing around a fire. We called it “Indian dancing.” It was the '80s. I wouldn't call it that today, but that's what we called it.
I can still picture those bars pretty well. Dark, loud, neon beer signs on the walls, pitchers of cheap beer on the table, cigarette smoke everywhere and a bunch of us with nowhere particularly important to be. We weren't discussing anything meaningful. We were watching people, making comments and making each other laugh. The second those purses hit the floor, we knew what was coming.
I don't know when I last saw women put their purses in a pile in the middle of a dance floor and dance around them. Maybe women still do it and I'm just not spending enough time on dance floors anymore. That's probably the more likely answer. I'm sure we had names for a bunch of other things that I've completely forgotten too. Somehow these three are still in my head.
Pulling a Rog is the only one I still get to use with any regularity. At 61, I'm probably doing more Re-Iterogs than I was at 21. The problem is that when I'm with guys my age now, nobody is quite as good at catching them. I can tell the same story twice and there's a decent chance the guy I'm talking to doesn't remember the first one either.
Which does make me wonder if I've already written this blog. (I had to check.)
About Greenland Sharks
Greenland Sharks is a Chicago men's group who value friendship, experiences, and the long swim. Just a crew that shows up. No speeches. No name tags. No nonsense.
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