Ten Things Tuesday
April 15, 2008 by mrschili
Last week, I posted a TTT about my adventures in the South land. This week, I’m going to post ten things that call me out as a native New Englander. These are my favorites from the 101 Ways You Know You’re From Boston list that Auntie posted on her site last week. I laughed out loud at about 97 of them, and here are ten that I have to cop to:
1. You know how to pronounce the names of towns like Worcester, Billerica, Gloucester, and Haverhill. I do. “WUH-stah,” “Bill-RICK-ah,” “GLAW-stah,” and “HAYVE-rull.” There’s also PEE-bidy, BED-fid, and MED-fid.
2. You know holding onto the railing when riding the Green Line is not optional. Those little trolleys make some wicked sharp turns!
3. The words ‘WICKED’ and ‘GOOD’ go together. ‘Wicked’ can also be correctly followed by ‘fast,’ ‘bad,’ ‘pissed,’ and ‘pissah,’ which is different from pissed. ‘Wicked’ rarely means something negative in New England - it’s usually just an adverb equivalent to ‘very.’ As Auntie pointed out in her post, I also say “lookit,” often without an object (not “lookit this,” but just “lookit”) . I’m pretty good at pronouncing my R’s, though I’ll drop them if I’m drunk, tired, or in the company of someone with a strong Boston accent.
4. You can complete the following: ‘Lynn, Lynn…’ …City of sin; you never go out the way you came in.
5. You know that the Mass Pike is some sort of strange weather dividing line. It’s freaky, you guys! Seriously - we can get a dusting to an inch of snow below the pike (which is the major east/west road from Boston to New York state, for those not familiar with the area) and three feet above it. Weird. 495, one of the two major ring roads around Boston, is the same way, and I can’t begin to tell you why that’s true, but it is.
6. 4:15pm and pitch black out means there’s just 3 more shopping days until Christmas. I’m in my pajamas by 5:00 most of the winter.
7. People you don’t like are all ‘Bastids.’ Kinda, yeah. Like the people who make us pay for internet in airports? Bastids!
8. Thanksgiving means family, turkey, High School football, and the long version of Alice’s Restaurant. We actually time our departure to whichever relative is hosting Thanksgiving so that we can listen to Alice’s Restaurant in the car on the way there. We even know which stations play it when.
9. The Big Dig tunnel disaster wasn’t really that much of a surprise. I’m going with Auntie’s answer here; no disaster in the state of Massachusetts is a surprise.
10. You can’t look at the zip code 02134 without singing it. Auntie’s too young to remember this, but there was a kids’ show on PBS in the early to mid 70s called Zoom. Kids would write the show to pass on ideas for the program or to get directions for the projects and stuff that they would do on the show. The directions were as follows: “Send a SASE to ZOOM, Box three-five-oh, Boston, Mass., OH-TWO ONE - THREE FOUR, SEND IT TO ZOOM!” We STILL sing this in the Chili household, even though the show’s been gone for decades now.
Thanksgiving means family, turkey, High School football, and the long version of Alice’s Restaurant.
You mean everyone doesn’t do this? The rest of the country is really missing something. As a Thanksgiving Trio, it’s wicked pissah.
No Chili, it’s “Wiss-tah”!
In’it, though, Colonel? NOT everyone does this, but I agree that they’re missing out.
Actually, Auntie, I think it’s both, and what you say depends on where you’re from (or where you spend the most time). Bowyer, who grew up just outside that town, calls it Wiss-tah. I (and you) grew up calling it Wuh-stah. Your pronunciation of it may have changed over the years, but it’s still Wuh-stah to me.
OH-two-ONE-three-FOUR! Love it.
I still have a little something I got from ZOOM way back when after I did that. It’s a little guide to American Sign Language. I don’t quite know where it is, but it’s somewhere.
We got that “wicked good” thing ’round these parts, but it’s definitely transplanted from somewhere. Now I know where.
“Wicked” came to me and mine from the Incredibles!
And now I have the Zoom theme song in my head: Zooma, Zooma, Zoom, Zoom, Zoom!
Oh Two One THREE FOUR - send it to ZZOOOOOOMM!!
Boston might well have been in another planet for all the context it held for me when I first learned that, growing up in Montreal. My twin and I watched that show religiously way back (and back) when and no, I can’t see those numbers without singing them!
Oh Two One THREE FOUR was something in the fog but I knew I’d remember it with prompting. My kid brother was a ZOOM fan and being the after school babysitter I heard it everyday. I’ll ask him if he remembers it. He’s got a terrific memory and will probably quote me whole shows.
Silly me, I played the video and now I can’t get the tune out of my head either.
I did not play the video because I was afraid of getting it stuck in my head (like it hasn’t been stuck there since I was 8). Somewhere in my mom’s house I have the whole Zoom Activity book. It was awesome!
I have trouble with the “Ham” towns. If it is “East-Ham” why isn’t it “Wrent-Ham” instead of “Wren-tham?” By my lights, in Massachusetts if you “Need Ham” you can “(W)rent ham,” but you wanna make sure you only eat “Dead Ham.”
One day I hope to visit “Leo-Minster.”
People in Mass steal all the “r” letters from the ends of words and give them to the words that end in vowels: “butta” on your bread; a trip to “Cuber.” I think this is actually a state law.
My Honey calls the Mass Pike “the Hat,” on account of that cute little pilgrim hat sign they use.
haha — my dad grew up in Lynn, but I never heard that ditty before…
Gawd thas wicked. As a Mainer from the Real Maine (not downeast) I also love a hard R. But we do tend to drop our “ing” endings. I sometimes catch myself talkin’ in class and tell the kiddos I would like to buy a g.
We also say Jeezum Crow, do you know that one?
Bo, I had NO IDEA that Zoom was a national thing - I thought it was native to Boston. COOL! Something else we have in common!
Seester, the kid in the Incredibles didn’t use it the way we New Englanders do; he said “that was TOTALLY WICKED!” and we tend to use wicked as an adverb. Still, regardless of how one uses it, it’s a pretty good word. Did you notice, when we were in the gift shop, that I thought the ladybug stapler was “wicked cute”? I was a little embarrassed that I said that - I was comfortable and off my guard and my native speech fell out…
‘Mama, Laurie, and Kizz - I’m sorry if I planted a bug in your brains. It’ll go away in a few days, I’m sure…
Gerry, the misplacement of the R cracks me up - it’s as though the Universe can’t exist with all those R’s floating around, so they have to attach themselves to the ends of words - kind of like free electrons. I clearly remember our principal in high school telling us that we had to do certain things if we expected to get our “diplomers.” (and I don’t know where Leo-Minster is, but I’ve been to Lemminstah.)
Floribunda, REALLY? I grew up with that - I thought everyone on the North Shore knew it.
Kwizgiver, I drop into the accent every once in a while - usually when I’m drunk or tired, as I mentioned, but also when I’m really comfortable in my environment. The accent has been mostly (beaten) educated out of me, but I keep a little bit of it tucked away for special occasions!
Here’s a little Mass. Trivia- the cute little tilted Pilgrim hat used to (like back in the 60s when I was about
have an arrow through it. They removed that in the 70s. The Pike hasn’t been the same since.
Pike trivia- My mom and dad lived in Boston in the 50s, in an apartment that was in a neighborhood taken to make the Mass. Pike Extension (from 128 to Boston). She stills refers to that construction project by what Bostonians called it back then (in an homage to the Civil War general Sherman and the Mass. state Sec. of Transportation) -”Callahan’s March to the Sea”.
Gotta go sing along with Rik Tinory’s ‘Remember Old Scollay Square” now…
Yeah, I could tell you didn’t know from the way you were talking. ZOOM was in Boston just like Mister Rogers was in Pittsburgh–local, but thanks to the magic of public television…
I posted long comments on Auntie’s site.
My favorite town to hear non-natives pronounce was Haverhill.
Hav-ER-hill is dead wrong. It’s HAY-vrul.
I think I’m gonna staht droppin’ my R’s around heah in Alabamer just to see what happens.
I watched ZOOM on PBS. One day I tried to show Nathan the criss-cross arm thing they did (did that have a name?!) and he looked at me like I had lost my mind.
Michael, let me know how that works out for ya.
Lea, *SNORT!!* I LOVED Bernadette! I don’t think the arm thing had a name, though:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=fCJDBKih688
I was talking to my students about Zoom the other day - I can’t remember why - and I was showing them the arm thing. They, too, looked at me as though I’d lost my mind!
~*test*~
I particularly enjoyed this- I love regional differences in language in and culture. I’m glad that we are still clutching to them despite rampant homogenization. I sang that Zoom tune throughout my whole childhood and still do- just change the numbers around. I never could do the arm thing and was envious of those who could.
I’d never heard of the Alices’s Restaurant thing at Thanksgiving. Interesting. Er, WICKED interesting, I mean.
#4, the only other time I’ve ever heard of Lynn was in Keith Ablow fiction. He is a WICKED good writer! I also recall watching ZOOM. (fyi, I don’t get out much!)
oh, yes, and regarding the video I wanted to say.
“Choreography has come a long damn way, hasn’t it?”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCJDBKih688&hl=en]