Add Banter to Your Daily Routine

My first encounter with banter was while playing high school baseball. There are lulls during a game, and team members tended to fill them with meaningless chatter that kept life in the contest. My next experience with banter was as a laborer on a construction gang engaged in tearing down an old dime store in Fountain Square, in Indianapolis. All day long there were exchanges between the guys who came in all shapes, sizes, and colors. Someone always had a comment to make, and there would always be a reply from a guy close by. No quip went unanswered. And so the days moved along.

I don’t recall much banter, per se, in college except for that which occurred as everyone was standing around the fraternity house living room awaiting the sound of the dinner chime. The conversation was all in good humor except for a rare, serious matter like an upcoming football contest or a dance.

I stumbled across the Mt. Olympus of banter roughly 25 years ago when I moved to the San Juan Islands in the Great Northwest. There I sat at the feet of the masters for a number of years, the guys who hung out at the Shipyard Cove Marina in Friday Harbor. They were banter pros. Six days a week they met for coffee around 8:30 A.M. in the Harbormaster's office. By 10 A.M. everything was resolved that was going to be. Some would leave or drift out onto the docks. A few would “go to work,” which meant home. The coffee was known for its punch; the conversation for its variety; any conclusions for their lack of real value; and the zinger comment of the day—if there was one—for its potential repeatability at another session.

Normally, during the sessions, one of the participants would end up on the receiving end of one or more barbed comments. Newer guys were particularly vulnerable. Some couldn’t take it and stopped attending. Others just rolled with the punches until the punchers gave up or a new target appeared on his own in the doorway. No invitations to attend were ever issued, but a few people were subtly eased out, purely with banter pressure. I remember one fellow who wore pink pants, no socks, and brought a dog in with him. The guy had a big boat and a mouth to match. He didn’t last long. His exit visa was stamped the day he revealed a mechanic had told him that he had oval shafts and needed to buy new, round ones for his boat. And he bought them! ($10K.) Pinky could never live it down. The oval shaft story gets aired occasionally to this day at the Cove.

The nicknames earned by certain gang members provide a clue to the nature of the gatherings. The names included Little Bill, Sawchuck, Kurmudge (short for curmudgeon), Silent Norm, Headwind, Big Bill, and Swede.

Year in, year out, the banter has continued, and may it ever do so.