Me & Matt

I’ve been with Matt for nearly 17 years and he never commented on this until today and neither has anyone else I’ve spoken to.  I mentioned to him that something stressing me out was giving me “agina.”  To which he finally replied, “That’s not a word.”

“Yes, it is,” I insisted.

“Nope, it’s agita.”

After a brief debate we searched for the answer online and the Google Gods proclaimed that agita is in fact a word for heartburn while agina is a word for nothing, unless I mean angina, which I don’t.  But I insisted: “Well, that’s not what I mean.  I don’t have heartburn.  This is giving me agina: an overall feeling of anxiousness.  It must be Italian.”

While not true, this seemed a plausible answer as my Italian-American family does use a number of random Italian words.  “Moosha moosh” describes when you just don’t feel great.  You are still willing to eat, but then you’ll want to lie down.  We say “Madone” which is the Italian swearword I know best.  […]