If you work as a waitress or waiter in Honolulu, chances are we've been very close.

I'm sorry, sir, what would you like?

Thisclose.

Come again?

Your turned ear mere inches from my moving lips.

Sorry, it's noisy in here. One more time, please.

And chances are you've wanted to smack me.

EH, CONFUNNIT, SPEAK UP!

But you're not alone. A chronic mumbler, I've sent teachers into premature retirement, their backs aching miserably from having to lean forward so often. I've sent away hundreds of direction-seeking tourists more hopelessly confused than when they first pulled over. And my poor doctor. I don't suppose it's standard practice to hold your stethoscope up to your patient's mouth.

So not only do I have a face for radio, I have a voice for, well, newspapering.

Still, if you have to be a mumbler, you may as well be a guy, and you may as well live in Hawai'i, where many cultures recognize the masculine trait of speaking sparingly and, when pressed, very, very softly.

I grew up in Palolo Valley where, if you were skinny and bookwormy, it was pretty good policy to keep your yap shut. I went to high school at Kalani, where a lot of us muttered in the elided, atonal, not-quite-pidgin tongue so closely identified with East Honolulu locals.

Guys being guys, even that got compressed between friends.

It was only a deep well of maternal patience, along with superb control of her facial muscles, that kept my mother from wincing whenever my friend Mark and I used to talk on the phone.

Uzzat? Waddumagunnadonite? Unno. Wayawannadonite?

Unno. Wha'ver.

"Is that code?" Mom would ask. "That's not English, is it?"

Yes and no. Our closed-circuit language was English in a form virtually unintelligible to ears accustomed to more formal diction.

To this day, Mark and I can talk for hours without a hard consonant sound passing between us, and without either of our families understanding a single word.

There are, I suppose, elements of confidentiality and exclusivity — some would say passive-aggressiveness — in the muted way many men choose to speak to each other, even when the subject is as innocuous as who deserves the start on Saturday.

My brother and I have been known to hold involved personal conversations at work with no more discernable sound than the rattling vent in the other room.

Wanna know what we say?

Gimmecalleniltelya.

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.