A Childhood Code (Mid to Late 1990's)

When I was about ten or eleven, a really good friend and I came up with a sort of "Morse Code" to communicate during long church meetings. We used it for years and got pretty fluent with it. Here's how it works.

We first split the alphabet into segments of five: E, J, O, T, and Y. The left foot taps the ground once for each of those letters. For example, if you wanted an O, you'd tap your left foot three times.

Letters between EJOTY were tapped with the right foot after the appropriate ammount of taps with the left foot. So if I wanted an N, I'd tap my left foot twice to get up to J, then my right foot four times to get to N. Letters A-D are simply tapped with the right foot. Using this system, the maximum number of taps for a letter is eight, and that's four with both feet for X.

Spaces were communicated by tapping the ground once with both toes, numbers one through nine were accomplished by tapping the ground with your right heel, and zeros with your left heel. There was no punctuation as context generally sufficed.

It was surprising how quickly we learned this code and how much we were able to convey using it. We usually used it to entertain ourselves but I do remember a few times where we actually talked about things that mattered, such as our projected odds of passing fifth grade math.

No one that I'm aware of ever caught on to our code, as we tried to tap our feet in time with the music. And thankfully, we weren't struck by any thunderbolts from heaven in mid conversation.




If you're still confused, here's a chart where R/L means Right or Left, T/H means Toe or Heel and numbers signify the ammount of taps.

A - RT:1
B - RT:2
C - RT:3
D - RT:4
E - LT:1
F - LT:1 RT:1
G - LT:1 RT:2
H - LT:1 RT:3
I - LT:1 RT:4
J - LT:2
K - LT:2 RT:1
L - LT:2 RT:2
M - LT:2 RT:3
N - LT:2 RT:4
O - LT:3
P - LT:3 RT:1
Q - LT:3 RT:2
R - LT:3 RT:3
S - LT:3 RT:4
T - LT:4
U - LT:4 RT:1
V - LT:4 RT:2
W - LT:4 RT:3
X - LT:4 RT:4
Y - LT:5
Z - LT:5 RT:1

0 - LH:1
1 - RH:1
2 - RH:2
3 - RH:3
4 - RH:4
5 - RH:5
6 - RH:6
7 - RH:7
8 - RH:8
9 - RH:9

Space - (LT:1 RT:1)