Speaker 0 00:03 Welcome to brain junk. I'm Tracy <inaudible> and I'm Amy Barton. And this is a brainstorm trace. Are you assigned Tilton? Do you watch much or, I saw a few. It's a Barton family favorite. There's an episode where Kramer has a new girlfriend who he likes a lot, but there's a problem. And the problem is she's got the Jimmy leg and so he does one of his standard entrances and he says she's throwing off my whole sleep thing. And I was talking with you and a friend of ours recently and our friend hadn't heard the Jimmy legs phrase have, you know, are you familiar with it? I, I think you mean like bouncing your leg up and down? But yeah, I had never heard it called that. Oh yeah. So I always associate it with the kid in class that's wiggling their Jimmy leg and uh, stop the Jimmie leg, you know, cause it's like, Oh my gosh, please stop.
Speaker 0 00:51 Stop. Um, and now there's meds for it, which is nice because for some people this really is what we would call the Jimmy leg is also involuntary tremors, uh, in your sleep. Like restless leg syndrome. So really the Jimmy leg has a solution now and that's terrific. But the origin of the phrase is kind of fun because like why would you call that the Jimmy leg? What, where did that come from? Why was Jimmy super irritating with his leg? Jimmy was a soldier ah, uh, military origin. Apparently back in the day the Jimmy legs was the name given to the chief
[email protected] about different nicknames for different positions in the Navy. So the master at arms, they would walk the deck the way a regular policeman would walk the beat. And they also were the powder man that packed black powder into the ships cannons.
Speaker 0 01:46 So being the police force of the Naval service, the French word for that is gendarme and uh, which that French translation is people with weapons. I did not know that. That's a fun thing to you learning so much today. Everybody, I feel like Pat yourselves on the back for having a moment to learn. So that gendarme was shortened to Jonty and they think that that was then further Jimmy and then the legs came from the nickname that they're marching around the decks. So that's the Jimmy legs. That's so cool. It is interesting. It's one of those who would have known I would not have expected that origin. And then it just kind of got hooked onto people who can't hold still. Yup. That wiggly leg and always moving and wow, I am not afflicted with this. I uh, know people who do do that. Oh yeah.
Speaker 0 02:34 My husband has the Jimmy leg. Sometimes I can't sit next to him at polite occasions sometimes cause he's bouncing as he bouncing because he's like, I would like to not be here now and I would like to go. Or is it just, does he, does he even know that he's doing it? He doesn't really know he's doing it. It's an siphoning off energy because if you're holding still like at the Christmas Eve service or something, we're being polite. You're holding still. Um, and he doesn't sit for log. He's a standing desk kind of guy. And so when he's seated for that long, I mean, he's a musician. There's always something in his head and yeah, my son is also a Jimmy like kid so much.
Speaker 1 03:10 Yeah.
Speaker 0 03:15 We're on Facebook and Instagram as brain junk podcast, and you can find us on Twitter is at my brain junk. Amy and I will catch you next time when we share more of everything you never knew you wanted to know and I guarantee you will not be bored.
