“Chilly bin,” an actress in a New Zealand show called Wellington Paranormal said. What’s a chilly bin? It was obvious, in the scene, that a cooler, a portable ice chest, or whatever you call it in your region was the product of her concern. Colloquialisms, like this one, fascinate me. I’ve even been informed that I use some colloquialisms, we all do, without knowing it. We use terminology, phrases, and various descriptors that our ancestors, family, and friends do, and we absorb all this from those in their country, region, and locale. My cousin uses some different terms and phrases, and everyone around him does too. They also have a subtle, almost imperceptible drawl, and they overemphasize their ‘R’s’ in a manner that catches the ear. They live an hour and a half from me. The modern version of the portable ice chest made its first relatively wide-scale appearance around 1951, which means the terms cooler and chilly bin weren’t derived from old world languages. Chilly bin also isn’t a result of a creole, a pidgin, or any other linguistic quirk with a characteristic mixing of parent languages typically born in a culture of multilingual settings. The term chilly bin was born and bred in New Zealand. So, when and why did New Zealanders (AKA Kiwis) begin calling the portable ice chest the chilly bin? A short but decent search of the term chilly bin suggests there is no person or event responsible for the term, and there is no point of origin or any identifiable historical trails for the term. “It’s just Kiwis being Kiwis,” some sources say. One explanation for this lack of explanation is that sometimes Kiwis simply enjoy “adding a touch of Kiwi personality to the English language, making it distinct and memorable.”
Australians (Aussies) call the portable ice chest an ‘esky’, but that makes more sense because they derive that term from a famous brand of coolers sold in Australia. Americans call tissues Kleenex, gelatin is Jell-O, toaster pastries are Pop-Tarts and Aussies call the portable ice chest an esky. The term chilly bin makes no sense, in that vein, because there hasn’t been a chilly bin brand sold there until a recent effort to start one.
How do linguistic quirks, specific to a locale, start? How do they survive the “Isn’t it called a cooler?” corrections? “Yes, but that’s not what we call it here,” I imagine fathers telling their children. “But we’re the only ones who call it that,” I imagine the kids replying. The population of New Zealand stands at just over five million, so I can only guess that people who are proud of their heritage and traditions, big and small, have a tough time sustaining them against the language found in movies, TV, and the internet. Though I know nothing about New Zealand, and I’ve never met a Kiwi, I have to imagine that younger people, though proud of their heritage and traditions, refuse to use the term chilly bin, because it sounds so local, yokel.
It’s All Relative to Relatives
I have a cousin who moved from the Midwest to the Southern part of the United States. Our family is from a region of the Midwest that has no discernible accent, and this cousin spent his entire childhood, the formative years, in our locale, until his family moved south in his early teens. When we visited him, decades later, we found that he switched languages. I didn’t understand that as a young kid, so I asked him about it. He said something about how he didn’t intend to switch, but he picked it up as a result of linguistic osmosis. “It sounds like everyone down here made the switch,” my brother said. “They all speak with an accent.” Our cousin overheard this and joked, “Son, down here, you’re the one with the accent.”
“Really?” I said. “Because, if you watch TV and movies, everyone talks like us?” My innocent comment basically asked him why he didn’t see the error of his ways and switch back to our accent-free dialect. My naïve, uninformed point was that he should’ve recognized, at some point, that he wasn’t speaking in “the normal manner” the rest of us in our shared English-speaking country did.
Manufacturers make a concerted effort to localize their products for consumers, and online stores often do the same. If New Zealand comprises roughly five million, manufacturers likely do not spend too much time and effort regionalizing their products to accommodate their terminology. Kiwis surely recognize the more worldly terms “cooler,” “portable cooler,” or “ice chest,” but the maintain their terminology among one another. I could see the term chilly bin existing in an inclusive world that involved New Zealanders speaking among one another, but I would think that involving themselves in the world wide web would lead them to recognize that they’re holding onto the term in some kind of quant Kiwi manner that should eventually weed itself out among those who don’t want to ascribe to their quaint Kiwi traditions. Americans have slang terms, the French do, and the Brits do. We all have slang terms that we use growing up, and isn’t it fascinating how they transcend generations? What Americans call a popsicle, the Brits call an ice lolly. Americans refer to the “rising chair” as an elevator, and the Brits call it a lift. Due to the fact that the Brits used to own America, the inclination might be that Britian should own these linguistic levers, but America tends to dominate the world in media, technology, and international business. When we talk about media, we’re including TV shows and movies, and since American entertainment is more popular worldwide, their lexicon tends to dominate. Most countries formerly owned by the Brits (Australia and New Zealand in particular) adopted their slang and lexicon, but the Americas branched off and refused to use British slang in an apparent effort to further their revolutionary quest for total freedom, but did the British then refuse to adopt the American lexicon, because they refuse to speak the language of their refuse? Or are dialects and colloquialisms a natural course of insular language/lexicons among people? Order fish and chips in Britian, and you’ll receive a plate of fish and fries. Some suggest that most Brits do not call French Fries chips when they order it as a standalone, as various American fast-food chains have forced the term French Fries into the British vocabulary, but the term fish and chips continued in Britain when it’s ordered as a meal. Brits call chips, or potato chips in America, crisps. Some sites suggest that the Brits see the fried bits of potato Americans know as French Fries as those that were chipped off a potato, i.e. each fry was chipped off a potato. The actual origin of the French Fry may have started in 1629, in the country of Chile, or later in Spain, but the Belgians and French have had a long dispute that the French Fry developed in their country. Regardless, we can only guess that the Brits developed the term chips, because they are averse to referring to anything with a French designation. The term fish and chips hold true for Aussies, the Irish, and Kiwis.
The Loo
In my locale, we’ve loaded the American lexicon with contractions. ‘Fyouwanto’ is a common phrase in certain regions of America that contracts the words if you want to. Brits say, ‘Innit’ for isn’t it, as in, “Cold day today, innit?” My very young son once noted that Americans say, “I’m headed to the restroom” if they’re in a restaurant and “I’m going to the bathroom” if they’re at home. Brits say, “I’m headed to the loo” regardless where they’re at. I’ll admit here that I always thought they were saying, the Louvre. Now, I know the Louvre, the art museum in Paris, is pronounced “The Loov-rah,” but when I hear the Brits and Americans refer to that museum, they say, “The Loov.” Seeing as how Brits often leave off the last syllable of many of the words they say, I thought “the loo” was a tongue-in-cheek shot to the French that they developed to conflate the waste removal room with one of France’s most treasured tourist destinations.
As with most commonly and casually used terms, “the loo” has uncertain origins. As such, we can only derive possibilities and theories. One theory has it that the loo was derived from the French term for water: l’eau. “This theory suggests that the word “loo” was originally used to refer to a water closet or a room with water facilities, which eventually came to be associated with toilets. Another theory is that the term “loo” originated from the cry of “gardyloo” used by medieval French-speaking servants in Scotland before throwing their waste matter out of the window. Over time, the theory states, the cry of “gardyloo” may have been shortened to “loo” and used to refer to the location where waste matter was disposed.” Gardyloo basically means “guard yourself for the water/waste,” or “watch out for the waste matter that I’m about to throw out the window here.” At some point, so goes the theory, the Brits just shortened it to “the loo”.
Linguistic Laughter
When my Southern cousin eventually returned to the Midwest, he said, “I was almost afraid to talk, because every time I opened my mouth, someone started giggling.” Our laughter is an unfortunate, involuntary, and almost reflexive reaction to anyone who uses different terms, speaks with regional dialects, or has a specific drawl or accent. We laugh based on the ‘I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry’ confusion. On my trip to the South, I managed to get the shock and awe giggling out of my system, but there was something about his drawl, his colloquialisms, and his slang, idioms, and patois that still had us all looking at each other, pumping our eyebrows, and giggling, because it was one of those “I’m sorry, I know it’s rude, but I can’t stop laughing” moments. If you’ve ever been on the other end of the laughter, you know we all have regional dialects, accents, and ways of saying things that are regional and local. The worst thing I ever heard was “You’re not from here are you?” a cashier asked me. “You know how I can tell? You don’t have an accent.” My initial thought was that I didn’t have her accent. I’ve since learned that in my region of the country, we don’t have any accent. We might be the section of the country with the least amount of accent, and little in the way of regional dialect. I don’t write that to gloat, as I think accents, dialects, and drawls are colorful, and my region of the country might lack those more than any other. Yet, we do have various colloquialisms and slang terms. It’s all relative, but when we’re young, and we have no idea that there is another way to say what we’ve said our whole life, we don’t understand it when someone says something different or they say it a different way, and it strikes us as funny. Homer Simpson summed this up with his typical brilliance saying, “He’s talking funny-talk,” after hearing Herschel Krusofsky (AKA Krusty the Clown) pray in Hebrew.
“You’re basically crushing on a teenager,” Susie said to conclude her accusation that we were flirting with our teenage server. It wasn’t true, but it was funny, and all insults are not created equal. Some hit the soft spots we spend most of our time trying to hide from spectators, and some are just plain funny. Funny gets the competitive hackles up high, and if we don’t hit back, she owns the funny.
“You’re a couple of dirty old men,” she added. We spoke to this server the way we spoke to every woman who served us food and drink. This young server engaged in our playful banter, and she laughed while doing it. We laughed, everyone laughed, and we all had a good time doing it. This was our routine. If we had a server who was a homely, senior citizen with a hairy wart on the end of her nose, we would’ve engaged her in playful banter to try to make her laugh, so we can laugh, and everyone could have a great time. Unless the server happened to be male, we were consistently playful with everyone who served us food and drink. This particular waitress just happened to be a beautiful, young blonde who wore a crop top that exposed her washboard stomach, and she had a great set of teeth.
We could’ve laid out our “completely consistent with our character” defense, but that likely would’ve devolved into that tired “Nuh uh!”/“Yes huh!” debate. We could’ve called Susie’s age into question and asked her if she was jealous that she was no longer a young, hot body that old men might want to entertain intermittently for a couple hours. Attempting to reset the parameters in this manner can fall under a petty and mean umbrella, however, and Susie’s challenge was not a confrontational, mean-spirited challenge of our character, but an entertaining way for her to belittle the men around her. If you step out of that parameter and become unnecessarily defensive, not only will you face the humiliating “I was just joshing,” but you also reveal something weird and uncomfortable about yourself. No, when someone like Susie hits you with something funny like this, you join in.
Even if such a comment makes us angry, and especially if it makes us angry, you join in, and attempt to outdo them there, in their spot and the frame they’ve created in the moment. If you let it go, you lose; if you try to “Well, what about you?” them, you lose; and it you get too defensive, you lose. The best course of action is to play with them on the playing field they’ve created and try to beat them there.
“We’re old, she’s young, I get it,” I said to Susie. “I agree with everything you’re saying about us and our relationship here, but she has belly exposed.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Susie asked.
“The exposed belly changes everything,” I said. “All conditions being equal, you take out the exposed belly, and she’s just another woman who is far too young for us to even engage in polite conversation. The exposed belly changes the chemistry and circuitry, or for you mystical types, the interiority, of the adult male mind. It’s science.”
“She’s probably eighteen-years-old,” Susie said to further her admonishments. “She’s young enough to be your granddaughter.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “But that crop top she’s wearing exposes the fact that she has a washboard stomach.”
“And that she’s eighteen.”
“If you study your science, you’d know what the exposed washboard belly of a teenager does to the chemistry and circuitry of the male brain. If I reach the point where you begin to question my level of brain activity, perform all of the traditional, medical tests, but if everything else fails, walk a female washboard stomach in front of me. If I don’t respond in anyway, pull the plug.”
***
“I’ll let you try a little bit of this drink, but if you don’t like it, you cannot make a face,” I say when I let someone try something I love. I didn’t invent the drink I want them to try, write the song, the book, or make the video I want them to watch, but for some reason, it’s so important to me that they like it too. I don’t own shares of the company or have any personal stake in the success of the product, but it’s my opinion that they made something delicious, interesting, and I want to share that temporary, nebulous bond with you. When they make that face that suggests that the drink is absolutely disgusting, it hurts in some strange way that is impossible to describe to anyone who doesn’t share my brain with me. “I don’t care,” we say, “I still like it.” That’s a front, a BS front that I create to hide my pain. There is some element of truth in it, however, for I will continue to drink it, listen to it, or read it, and I will continue to enjoy it in all the ways I did before they made that face, but it still hurts that they don’t like it the way I do. “How can you drink that sludge?” some say, further down the line, to compound their insult. They flipped the page on me by somehow making me defend my appreciation of the product that I once wanted to share with them. It’s almost as if they know I have some vulnerability on this subject, and somewhere deep in the recesses this feels like a violation of some bond that I once wanted to share with them.
***
“Who do you think is going to win the big game?”
“I don’t know.”
“Of course you don’t know. I don’t know, no one does, it hasn’t even started yet, but we all sort of play this game with one another to guess who is going to win. If you’re wrong, no one cares. No one cares if you’re right either, as a matter of fact. It’s just a little game we adults play with one another, and no one remembers who said what five seconds after the game ends.”
***
The material in this article is not meaningful, important or germane. Was it brilliant, hilarious, or groundbreaking? No, it is what I do. Some have natural gifts for storytelling, others have talent, but the rest of us have to work through it, for it, and to it. At some point in between, we reach a point where we can only do what we do. We all have talents, limitations, and everything in between. “Explore,” I say. “Eat it, drink it, learn it, live it, love it.”
Once we dig past that crusty superficial layer, it’s easier to dig, but if we dig too far, we hit that which is pleasing to the eye and ear. It’s a purposeless depth with an artificial feel to it, and it feels fine to write it, but when we read it we know it ruins the article. When we learn to avoid such depths, the reader might say, “This is great and all, but what do you want me to do with it?” There’s a beginning, an arc, and a conclusion, but to the reader it’s not everything it could be. To which we the author responds with the tired but true, “It is what it is.”
What is our definition of success? How do we know when we’ve achieved completion? Next question, what do we do when we don’t? We develop excuses for failing to achieve the maximum, but another point follows that point where we realize that we probably weren’t D) all of the above. We may have been A) and C), but we were lazy, scared, intimidated, or not ambitious enough to put a foot on the next rung up on the ladder. It might be one of those things, all of them or none, but I wonder how many suffer from the ‘I just never thought of myself as one of those guys’ mindset. We’ve all heard about the definition of success, and we love the general discussions of one guy succeeding over another, but how many of us know that we’re going to succeed within a structured format, regardless the obstacles they place before us? This concept struck me when Jackie and Jody informed me that they were both anchors for competing local news networks. “How do you even think you’re capable of such a thing?” I asked them. I knew Jackie on an intimate, friendship level, and I spoke with Jody on an almost-daily basis. They were my people, and I couldn’t believe that any one of my people could go beyond dreaming of such things.
“It’s a low-rent, very local network,” Jackie said. “You’ve seen it. The production value of my broadcast is zilch. It’s about two notches above what some guy filming himself in his mom’s basement could do. It’s nothing to write home to mom about.” It was to me. It was a stratosphere I never even considered before, and I didn’t think I’d ever even meet someone who thought like they did. I don’t know if Jackie and Jody had a better support system growing up, or if some people just believe in themselves more than others. I don’t know, but I’ve met a number of people I life who succeeded beyond my wildest dreams, and they never thought as much of it as I did. They dreamed higher. We could grow frustrated by it, develop excuses for our inability to succeed, or just keep doing what we do.
“Youth is wasted on the young,” a famous old person, who is now dead, once said. If they have the opportunity to see us now, I wonder if they say, “Life is wasted on the living.”
We can do just about anything and everything we want, but we don’t because everything is “SO BORING!” When we’re younger, we have the health and energy to do more, but we don’t because there is this“Is that all There Is?”mentality to doing extraordinary things. There are some exciting people to meet, places to go, and things to encounter, but most of what we experience in life could be characterized as mundane, trivial and meaningless to those with experience in such characterizations. To those who no longer have the energy of youth or the health necessary to do a number of things, they view youth as wasted on the young.
Remember brooding in the corner, because that comically weak chin strap on your birthday hat snapped, while everyone else was running around laughing, screaming with joy, and just having a whale of a good time. Wouldn’t you love to redo that day and all of the other fun and frivolity that you missed because you thought life was “SO BORING!”
I used to look forward to birthdays. I used to count the days until a bunch of people screamed “Happy Birthday!” to me with hats on, kazoos in their mouths, and party favors all around. I remember Batman-themed birthday parties, Scooby Doo parties, and a Shazaam! birthday party. My seventh birthday stands out, because I played my best friend, and biggest rival, in the most popular football video game of the era, and I beat him! It was such a great birthday party that it set a precedent that no future birthday could match. Every birthday after that “Sucked!” because they were “SO BORING!” Not even the “Welcome to the roads!” 16th birthday, the “Happy Bigenoughtobarday!” 21st, the dirty thirty, or the still-fun@40 birthday party could match that seventh birthday party. At some point, we all stop looking forward to birthdays, and we start to look back. No one knows what specific age this starts happening, but we lose our jubilant “This is my day!” smiles as our odometer clicks by.
The older I get, the colder I get. I’m freezing all the time now.
The older I get, the bolder I get. I used to pretend to love things they told me to love, “You don’t love The Lone Ranger?” they asked. I pretended I did, because I was a kid, and a boy, and they expected every boy to love their brand new, The Lone Ranger toys. Now that I’m old and bold, I want to go back in time and tell everyone I knew that I never loved The Lone Ranger. I was told to love it, and I was taught to like it, because every good boy does. I tried to like his horse Silver and his buddy Tonto, but everything they did was “SO BORING!” to me. I pretended to love Cheech and Chong later, because everyone expected me to love their risque, naughty brand of humor. Now that I’m old and bold, I can finally say they only had one joke that they did over and over in as many ways as they could think up, but it was one joke, and I never considered that joke that funny. Everyone expected me to love Animal House when I was in college, because laughing at that movie is what college-aged students do. Now that I’m older and bolder, I no longer have to pretend to like the guitar-smashing, the zit-popping mashed potato joke, or the uncomfortable in the blues bar joke that I’m expected to remember so fondly that I still get a tear of laughter whenever I think of it. I didn’t dare say any of that before, because everyone expected me to coat my love all over of it. I pretended that I did, because I wanted to fit in.
One of the few joys of getting old is that we no longer have to play pretend. We don’t have to say we love things to fit in, to spare someone’s feelings, and we no longer feel that need to constantly prove ourselves. I no longer feel the need to enter into that crucial, seminal argument on the issue of the day, because I want everyone to know how well informed I am. I no longer consider it my mission in life to change minds. I now see it as pointless. “You think you’re going to change her mind today at lunch?” I ask. “You’re going to battle against thirty-five years of conditioning. She’s been dying to prove her bona fides on this issue, and so have you. You’re not going to get anywhere if you sincerely hope to change her mind.”
They no longer expect us to love inconsequential matters now. They expect us to grumble about food portions, the cost of living, how much better things were in “my day”, and something about kids getting off my lawn.
I never thought I’d reach an age when I cherished life, but I never expected to be this old either. I didn’t expect to die young of course, but I didn’t expect I’d get this old either. I never thought I’d actually be grateful for decent health, because I thought that’s what old people did. I never thought I’d be happy to be alive, and greet each morning with a new-day smile. I never thought I’d try to make today better than yesterday, but I never expected to be this old either. “Youth is wasted on the young,” because they have the energy to live life and love it, they just don’t.
We watch clocks when we’re young, because we can’t wait to get out of one place to get to another. We watch clocks to escape the great “youth-thief” we call school, and then we watch clocks until it’s time to get off work. When we finally get out of those places, we go to other places with the same faces, because everything is overrated, overhyped, and eventually, “SO BORING!” Do clocks move slower in youth and faster in our senior years? I don’t know, but I was never happier in life than I was when complaining about it.
I remember when an old person told me that “We should be grateful for our health.” I was polite, and I said something like, “We do take good health for granted,” but I didn’t mean it. I thought good health was “SO BORING!” Now that my body is no longer the incredible, recuperative machine it once was, I appreciate moments of good health.
Some moronic celebrity was going on and on about a late-in-life career choice they made, and I didn’t hear most of what they said. The late-in-life characterization stuck with me though, so I looked the idiot up and learned we were the same age? I’m late-age now? I’m over-the-hill? What’s the hill? What age is the crest of that hill? My boss confessed, “My better years are behind me now, I know that.” He was 40 at the time. If my better years are behind me, why do I enjoy life now more than I ever did? Why didn’t I enjoy my better years more? You don’t. We don’t. No one does. It’s natural, human nature, and the way of life. “Youth is wasted on the young.” You can mourn the lost years, regret that you didn’t do more, or you can try to live the best life you can live now to try to make up for it.
“Life is what you make it,” an old stranger once told me.
“Uh huh! Now, could you move aside!” I wanted to say. “I’m not going to appreciate my life or my good health, stranded outside Walgreens like this, where the weather is suboptimal. I can’t make it better, until my dad finally picks me up, and he’s already forty-five minutes late!” When I finally get to the place where I’m supposed to be I’m probably going to say, “This is SO BORING.”
Rilaly 