Tuesday, March 7, 2006
The Great Carbonated Beverage Debate
Huz and I grew up in Colorado. This means several things about us, 1. we enjoy the outdoors, and 2. we love Mexican food. This also means that we speak differently than people who grew up, say, in New York or Mississippi. Specifically, we grew up calling carbonated beverages like Coke, Sprite, Dr. Pepper and the like "pop." We didn't call it soda, or cold drink (like they do in Baton Rouge), or "Coke" (even when it's not a Coke).*Is this a regional thing? Is it a socio-economic thing? (One of Huz's Ph.D. friends supports this idea - as if "pop" were a lower-class term than "soda"!?) What do you think? Help me out with the debate and tell me - where did you grow up and what did you call it? (Whether your family was white collar or blue collar is up to you to reveal.)
For the record, I still call it "pop," but Huz has converted to the apparently more high-brow "soda." Hoytie-toytie.
*Most Southerners I know use "Coke" to describe ALL kinds of carbonated beverage, even Sprite, which is pretty much the polar opposite of Coke (it's the anti-Coke, if you will). I say there's something fundamentally wrong with that. I can handle calling facial tissue "Kleenex" even if it's not Kleenex brand and I can handle calling cotton swabs "Q-Tips" even if they're not Q-Tip brand because, come on, who wants to go around saying "pass me a facial tissue" or "pass me a cotton swab"!?** Not me. Besides, Target brand facial tissues look exactly the same as Kleenex tissues - not so with Sprite the Anti-Coke!
**Was that a sentence or a question? I covered both bases with the exclamation mark and question mark. I'm sneaky like that.
[Or soft drink! I forgot that option.] |
