Local Lingo

When I moved to Florida, I couldn’t get over the lizards that seemed to run every which way all over the sidewalks. Exclaiming “Look at that one!” revealed me to be a newcomer more quickly than ignorance of local restaurants and hangouts. I couldn't help it, though. I mean, I even found a gecko in work one time! How crazy!

Laramie has its own animal oddities. In addition to the ubiquitous pronghorn antelope that I giddily point out every time I see them, I've already mentioned the multitude of prairie dogs and other wild creatures that live nearby. I am excited by this wildlife, but I can tell that a native generally finds them merely a nuisance. I try to control my glee, therefore, and pretend that I find them only as exciting as cattle.

Besides local critters, I’ve found that sports teams and their details are one of the most important local peculiarities to master. In Florida, I admit to being perplexed that someone was looking forward to watching “The Bucks”. I’d never heard of a team with a deer mascot, but experience revealed that they were actually supporting “The Bucs” or the Buccaneers, the Tampa Bay football team. I soon learned that all things pirate were sacred in the Tampa area up to and including Gasparilla, the Pirate Parade which was some Mardi Gras kind of thing (I still have no idea why Pirates would throw beads at parade-goers, but I guess it beats walking the plank).

Here in Wyoming “Go Pokes!” hangs from the front of every local business now that school has started. I have deciphered its meaning as “Go Cowboys” or “Go Cowgirls”--the mascots of the University. I guess it’s a positive sign that they support both the male and female teams with the odd "pokes”, a word I don’t think I’ve ever used before. Even more odd, the local paper describes the high school sports teams as the Plainsmen and the Lady Plainsmen. Why wouldn’t the girls’ teams be the Plainswomen? One more of the mysteries of local life.

I’ve recently started a new job, and that always leads to lots of questions. All day long I ask what certain things mean, where items are located and how they want me to do various tasks. In addition to work-related things, though, I often am perplexed about local slang or colloquialisms.

My new manager came up to me one day and said, “Cherry, lime or strawberry?”

“Um, what?” I responded, totally lost.

“SODAS,” she answered as if I was five years old.

“Lime?” I said without conviction.

“Just lime?” she asked, dumfounded.

“Okay,” I said, with no idea what I was agreeing to. A lime soda sounded pretty weird, but maybe they meant Sprite or 7-up or something. About an hour later, giant cups from Sonic had appeared in the back room. They held about a liter of orange or red liquid and everyone was approaching them with obvious enthusiasm.

I pointed to the two different drinks and said, “What are they?”

One woman said, “Oh, the orange is cherry-lime and the red is strawberry-lime. I went ahead and ordered you a cherry-lime.”

I tentatively grabbed an orange drink and took a sip. The flavor wasn’t bad, but I felt like my teeth were going to rot away, it was so sweet. There was no way I could drink that entire giant cupful! I smiled and thanked the boss for his generosity (it was his treat, apparently), but I silently questioned who had ever thought of such a thing.

To cover my confusion, I mentioned that I had never been to a Sonic (which was probably obvious at this point). I thought that it was a fast food burger place and asked if that was indeed true.

“Yeah, but their drinks are better than their food,” was the answer I received (leading me to conclude that I probably wouldn’t be going to Sonic any time soon). “But their Conies are pretty good.”

Of course, I was stumped again. “Conies?”

“Foot-long hot dogs?”

Oh. I wouldn’t have expected Wyoming to have Coney Island hot dogs, but I guess I should have expected anything at this point.

Then they started talking about bow-hunting and changing the choke tubes in their shotguns and I gave it all up as a lost cause.

“Go Pokes!” I said cheerily as I left for the day.