We Need to Talk About Hey!

I used to have a comprehensive range of greeting tics that included, “Hello buddy”, “Hello fish” “Hey buddy”, and “Good afternoon, Legoland Windsor.”

Over the last few weeks “Hey” has been creeping back in. It comes out with a very particular intonation and doesn’t sound much like a greeting, but I’m sure it’s not the other sort of ‘Hay’ either.

While lots of my tics are complex and surreal this one’s simple and understated, but it goes on and on! To start with I was finding it intensely irritating and didn’t like it at all. But in the last few days, now it’s taken its place amongst the “Hedgehogs” and the “Biscuits”, I’m finding it more calming than annoying.

Sometimes new tics burst in all of a sudden while others creep in over several weeks. When I realise a tic’s become a new ‘regular’ – because I’m repeating it constantly – it always makes me reflect on what a strange thing Tourettes is. I wonder, with an odd mix of excitement and fear, about tics to come. What will I be saying in six months’ time? Or in three years? What will be the new “Squirrel” or “I’m a baby”?

People may talk about surprising themselves occasionally, but with Tourettes this happens every day.

Related tics

One response to We Need to Talk About Hey!

  1. Catwings says:

    I’ve had a range of greeting tics too – maybe because they’re fairly common in everyday life it makes it easier to catch on as tics? though that doesn’t explain why particular people/things are addressed in the greetings. my vocal tics have mostly been simple recently, with not many new words or phrases, now i’m a little bit disappointed that i’ve no fun new tics to report!

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