You say sled, I say toboggan!

Words...here are a few word stories for you...if you don't understand right now, trust me, you will! By the way, I love the English language, especially when these kinds of things happen!

I was teaching in Texas and talking to Elaine Hand and a couple of our students in her office one afternoon. I was talking about this toboggan we had when I was a kid...my brothers and older sister would use paraffin wax bars to wax the bottom of it to make it "fly"! You could fit 6 smaller people on it, or 4-5 regular sized people on it! It was awesome...As I was explaining that it had the classic curved front and how smoothly the wooden slats had been sanded...I noticed the kids looking at me funny. I asked what was wrong, and Elaine started laughing. In Texas, and many other southern states, a toboggan is a hat...like a sock cap. They had NO idea what I was talking about because they rarely get snow in Corsicana and if they do get snow...you couldn't sled even if you wanted to because none of the stores sell sleds or toboggans!  Toboggans-the sled not toboggans the hat, they do sell those...toboggans that is...hats. Wow...there's smoke coming out of my ears...anyway...you can't ride a hat and you can't wear a sled...just wanted to make that clear.

John was helping Steve McClard with his marching band camp a few years ago. John noticed that a lot of the kiddos had inappropriate footwear on for marching which led to this next wordy exchange.  
John: "Hey, folks!? We need to talk about what you're wearing...some of you are wearing thongs and that isn't a good thing to wear on the field while we're marching." One of the kids asked "Why not?" John replied, "Well, they don't give you the support you need and that little strap can even chafe you pretty badly." The kids were looking at him strangely and smiling and one of them asked "John, how do you know if we're wearing thongs or not?" John said, "I can tell just by looking...it's pretty obvious!" That's when Steve finally jumped in and said..."Uhhh, John, we call those flip flops now... what these kids call thongs are worn a little higher up!"

When I was in high school back in the early 80's, (best decade EVER) there was a certain type of guy that was referred to as a "head".  These were usually the guys who drove old, broken down, early 70's cars that they'd "souped up" and only succeeded in making it even louder. They had long hair, smoked and basically looked like the character - John Bender, played by Judd Nelson in "The Breakfast Club". (1985) For those of you who don't know that movie...watch it...it's a classic 80's movie. Anyway, calling that type of guy a "head", or calling a certain car a "head car", was done on a regular basis, just like using the words preppy, greaser, jock, or geek. I didn't realize until later when I was in college that the actual REASON they were referred to as "HEADS" was because they were the guys who smoked pot. Thus, heads comes from potheads. It was just one of those common sayings that had no meaning for me except to describe someone by assigning a label to them. Ahhhh, to be a teenager.

So, even though there are many more of these types of wordy mishaps that I could blog about, my wordplay for this post is... fine. (Musicians will get it.)