Amen! Homogeneity may be comforting and convenient, but variation can be interesting. Plus, it can be awfully funny!
I’ve probably told this story before, so if you’ve already heard it, just ignore the rest of this post. Before I was a lawyer, I worked as a newspaper editor in a little town about 50 miles south of Akron, where I was raised, and where I now live. Though the little town is in Ohio, just like Akron, it seemed the people there spoke a completely different language! (Every week, without fail, someone told me, “Y’ain’t from ‘roun’ here, are 'ya?” It went on for the entire four years I spent there.)
One day, the editor in charge of the opinion page asked me to proofread his weekly column. In it, he recalled how, when the newspaper was printed in the afternoons, his young son had a paper route, and in the winters, the boy would “put a toboggan on his head,” and trudge through the snow to deliver newspapers to his customers.
I was puzzled and a little horrified. How, I wondered, could a 10-year-old boy have put a toboggan onto his head? “Why would he put it on his head?” I asked. “Wouldn’t that have been pretty heavy?”
“No. He put it on to keep warm,” came the perplexed reply. It didn’t help. I was still confused. So was my colleague.
After the editor and I stared at each other in befuddlement for a second or two, the editor realized the problem.
“Jacqi, you just ain’t from 'round here,” he said. " 'Round here, a toboggan is a knitted hat. What is it up north, where you’re from?"
“It’s a 40-pound wooden sled!” I replied.