By Any Other Name It's a Toilet

Down to the final three posts (assuming I post every day) before my blogs all go silent. For some reason I feel pressure to write something significant. Unfortunately, that is a bit beyond my ken. (How's that for a cool word?) I seem to remember it as part of a song, or poem, I heard in my youth. Just did a quick lookup. Turns out it's a Scottish word used in British dialect. They have such cool words over there.

It's odd about words. We use them to express ideas, feelings, and a host of other things. And yet we often fail to achieve our goal because the words we use mean one thing to us and something completely different to those we are trying to communicate to. For instance.

Spouse is from Wisconsin. That's like another planet, and the people there struggled mightily with the English language. On my first visit to Spouse's family one of her younger sisters (J) asked I would like to take her to the outdoor.

Now I grew up in rural Minnesota, where American English was the order of the day. Even the foreign exchange students who came spoke better English than we did. But I knew what an "outdoor" was. I had lived on more than one place which had one. "Outdoor" was another way of saying "outhouse". So I was more than a little confused (and concerned) over my future sister-in-law's request. Turns out, in Wisconsin, "outdoor" meant "drive-in theatre".

When we were taken to a nearby town to speak with the caterers, J announced she was going to go get a drink at the bubbler and asked if I wanted to come along. Now I was thirsty, but drinking from a park fountain was hardly appetizing. Except that in Wisconsin "bubbler" meant "drinking fountain".

When we went some place to eat, J asked me if I wanted a Coke. I told her I didn't like Coke. But when I ordered a Pepsi she acted surprised and exclaimed, "I thought you didn't like Coke." I patiently explained I wasn't drinking Coke, but Pepsi. That was when (future) Spouse explained that Coke was any soda pop. So I said, "You mean pop?" They all looked at me like I was some kind of cannibal. "Pop" was grandpa.