I’m Casey, the Senior Crew Supervisor at MHYC. My job as staff is to work closely with Corpsmembers, especially the ACLCs, and study their ways. Like the anthropologists of yore I tip-toe through the jungle of stacked Energy Kit boxes, clipboard in hand, noting their behaviors and trying to understand their strange and fascinating culture. Of special interest to me is their language. Recently, a new word has emerged that I have been unable to comprehend. The word is “Oooyip.”
Casey Metz on the prowl, attempting to spot an ACLC in their natural habitat
I’ve asked the ACLCs directly about Oooyip, and on one occasion I even mustered the courage to try using it myself. These attempts were met with groans and eye-rolling—ACLC body-language for “Give it up, Casey. You don’t get it.” Here is my best attempt to distill oooyip’s myriad meanings into discrete definitions:
- An all-purpose interjection used exclusively by ACLCs in a variety of contexts, too subtle to be understood by the MHYC office staff.
- An onomatopoeic word for the yelp of a coyote [as sung in the closing scene of the documentary “Grizzly Man.”].
- A rare and colorful bird, the only know specimen sighted during the 2009 ACLC mid-season retreat.
- A lexical placeholder with numerous surface meanings, but a consistent underlying message: “We are a part group. We stick together. Only we understand the unspeakable core of our experience.”
I think the last definition strikes closest to the heart of Oooyip: It seems to serve, in any context, as a reinforcement of community—a nugget of culture that reminds its users of the culture itself. Back in my years as a Corpsmember we had a hand symbol that served much the same purpose. And I’m sure that future classes of ACLCs will also find unique way to express their sense of group identity. Perhaps this is what Clifford Gertz means when he says [“man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun.”]. Maybe we can take this lesson from Oooyip: We ought to be creators, rather than products, of our culture. And in my experience, AmeriCorps is an awesome place to make that happen.
By now the current ACLCs are rolling their eyes at me, because I will never understand the true nature of “Oooyip.” Who am I to translate the untranslatable, define the indefinable? Yet I continue into the mists of ACLC culture to try to find meaning. Next up: the rare and beautiful “jar dance.”
-Casey Metz, Senior Crew Supervisor
