At some point in this blog post, the AP Style Manual will explode.

A couple of weeks ago, I spent a calm Friday night playing billiards at a local bar.  It was a good spirited game of 8-ball, and neither me nor the person I played against would have caused Steve Mizerak or Jeanette Lee any worries in competition.  But my opponent kept noting that for some reason, I called the game “billiards,” and not “pool.”

“Why do you call it ‘billiards’?” I was asked.

I thought about it, and it dawned on me – I must have heard the sport referred to as “billiards” in my lifetime, and never bothered to call it anything else.  Sort of like being in England and talking about the Manchester United soccer match – only to get a blank stare from someone who had to fill up with petrol on their way to the chemist’s.  “Soccer, you say?  It’s football, love.”

We grow up with regional references – what you call “soda” someone else might call “pop” or “tonic.”  A couch might also be called a “sofa” or a “davenport” or a “chesterfield.”  Just think – Megan Willis’ blog could be known in Canada as “The Chesterfield Chronicles.”  Except most of us might misinterpret that as referencing cigarettes – or filters – or smokes – or coffin nails – or menthols – but I digress.

Another example.  One night last winter, my Street Academy trivia team were cleaning house during the Elbo Room trivia tournament, and we essentially won for the night.  During the event, the bar hosted a promotion by a beer company, and the promotional models were handing out brand-named bottle openers.

“Oh good,” I said, as one of the models handed me a bottle opener.  “I could use a church key.”

“What did you call it?” said one of my teammates.

“It’s a church key,” I replied.

“That’s what I thought you called it,” was the response.  “Why did you call that bottle opener a ‘church key’?”

Again… the regional response.  I’ve grown up to know that a “church key” can open up anything from a can of beer to a can of pineapple juice.  Use the church key to make two punctures in the top of the can – a big one and a small one – and the beverage pours out without splashing all over the place.

In all my worldly travels, I’ve picked up some grammatical anomalies that don’t necessarily fit the Capital District argot.  And they’ve stuck with me, similar to my habit of putting a horizontal hyphen through the number “7” to distinguish it from a serifed number “1”.

For some reason, I’ve always called a ruler a “measuring stick,” and I’m not sure which of the “twelve” schools I attended first drummed that into my head.  Maybe one teacher was trying to educate us on the metric system, and didn’t want to use the terms “yardstick” or “ruler” or “meterstick” so as to be progressive.  Ah, progressive education.  How far it has regressed.

I’ve used the slang term “putt’near,” as in “You’d better get in the house, it’s putt’near dinner time,” or “I just checked my watch and it’s putt’near 5 o’clock.”  I’m putt’near sure it came from my stint at Fine’s Mobile Home Trailer Park in Colonie back in the mid-1970’s.  I do recall one of the trailer park kids using that term consistently, and over time it became part of my dialect as well.  Yep, at one time Chuck was a trailer park boy.  No, I was not Bubbles.

Not sure how “tookin’ care of” got in my vernacular – not “tokin’,” as in smoking a joint, but “tookin,” as “That project was tookin’ care of.” Yeah, grammatically it should be “It has been taken care of…” but again I’ve used the word “tookin” to convey the same meaning.  Almost like a Presidential candidate saying “Youbetcha.”

I don’t use it as often as I did back when I was a kid, but I’ve used the term “dummydope,” and I think I can trace that back to my Grandma Betty, who probably mangled that from a Yiddish curse word that she used when I misbehaved.  She also used “Meshuggah,” although I may have misheard it as “Meshugginah.”  As in, I wasn’t mes-sure-ginah of what she was calling me.  אני מניח סבתא שלי חשבה שאני משוגע.

Also, the other day I was enjoying lunch at one of my favorite Albany eateries, Mug Shots, when I noticed two people ordering a couple of dishes of soft-serve frozen yogurt.  “I’d like mine with jimmies,” one said.  The other person said, “And can I get mine with sprinkles, please?”  I’m not sure how long it took before they both realized they asked for the same exact dessert toppings.  Oh well…

So have you ever caught yourself using a phrase or mangled word that may have come to you from your childhood or from your friends, and that you still use it to this day – even though you know it’s not the correct word?  And I’m not talking about using the word “ain’t.”  I ain’t getting into an argument about whether “ain’t” is proper English or if it ain’t proper English.  Feel free to add to the list.

As for me, I’m going to sit over here on the chesterfield and get a can of tonic – as soon as I find my church key – ’cause I’ve putt’near tookin’ care of this blog post.