¿ais, caramba?

In elementary school, my friend Leslie's family got the “call waiting” feature on their telephone line. The benefit of “call waiting” remains obvious, but the downside at that time was that if you didn't answer the second call, your second caller would neither get you nor your answering machine to leave you a message. Unfortunately, the panic Leslie experienced when she heard the double beep in her ear prevented her from mastering the switching-between-calls functionality, resulting in many dropped calls. Frustrated, her mother insisted Leslie hang up her first call in order to answer the waiting call successfully. Fearful of being banned from the phone altogether unless she complied, Leslie invented a code word she would invoke any time she needed to hang up immediately to answer another call. “Tootie!” she'd yell in the middle of our conversation, and I wouldn't even get a chance to say “bye” before the line would go dead. I could fault her for choosing to unceremoniously hang up on people instead of learning how to properly use “call waiting”, but we were just kids, so I give her full marks for ingenuity in work-around problem solving.

Recently I've been wondering if a code word might be the solution I seek for a few recurring situations in which much wants to be conveyed very quickly. For instance, when you're IMing or texting with a friend, sometimes the situation arises in which you must abruptly leave the conversation. There are some common abbreviations at your disposal, such as “brb”, “bbl”, or “afk”, but what if you won't “be right back”, don't know if you'll “be back later”, or it isn't strictly true that you are “away from keyboard”? Maybe what you really want to say is “I know we've been having a nice conversation in the slow, stilted way that modern people communicate, but something has arisen beyond my control and I must attend to it. I'm very sorry! Would that I could dispatch this intrusion forthwith, but alas my lot is not as such. Parting is such sweet sorrow, etc., etc., Your friend always, X,” but the abbreviation for that is far too long. May I suggest “ais”? It's a twofer, as I'll explain! First, it's an acronym for “Ack! Interrupted! Sorry!” which means practically the same thing as the mouthful above. And second, an ai is a three-toed sloth of South America (I learned that by playing Scrabble—very handy word) which dictionary.com says sounds a high-pitched cry when disturbed. By typing “ais!”, you're not only saying “Ack! Interrupted! Sorry!” but you're also declaring that you have been disturbed, and like the ais you are sounding your cry.

Tell me if you can that you do not have a use for “ais” in your chat-speak! Sure, using it might take you a little extra time explaining what you mean to the uninitiated, but

ais!