Funny names you had for stuff when you were little

[HardyGirl]

Seeing those ski masks Brian was talking about made me remember something:

When I was in kindergarten, all the boys wore ski masks to school in the winter. Some of these were the type that had holes around the eyes and mouth. Only they didn't call 'em ski masks, they were "Ooooh Hats". That's because the boys would wear these while they chased the girls saying "Ooooooh!" Well, I wanted one. My mom didn't think a girl should wear an "Ooooh Hat". But after a whole lotta begging, she finally conceded to a plain white one that looked similar to that Hulk one of Brian's. I didn't think it was as cool, b/c it was a boring white, and it didn't have the separate holes around the eyes and mouth. The boys had pretty much the same reaction.

Around that same time, I had a pair of two-toned blue leather and suede Stride Rite shoes. I don't know why, but I called this my "football shoes".

I also used to call dumpsters "fairy boxes". I was somehow convinced that fairies lived in these, flew around at night and slept in them during the day.

Being from NYC, when I was really little, I had never seen a pony. My older sister had a Joni Mitchell album that had a collage type drawing on the cover which included painted ducks. There's a line in one of her songs that says "and the painted ponies go up and down". I thought that pigeons were ponies, but they weren't painted.

Did you ever have weird names for things when you were just a little squirt?

[Brown Bear]

I think I mentioned this in an earlier thread, but when I was a kid, I called my 8" Megos "Little Men" and my 12" megos "Big Men".

To this day, I still refer to these as my Little man Collection.

[grayhank]

Sharri you do know now that Joni Mitchell was talking about wooden carousel horses in that song "The Circle Game" right? But that was quite an active imagination you had.

[HardyGirl]

Sharri you do know now that Joni Mitchell was talking about wooden carousel horses in that song "The Circle Game" right? But that was quite an active imagination you had.

Uh, yeah Scott. I figured that out when I was a bit older. But keep in mind, I was a 2 and a half year old city kid, who had never seen a pony, and drew my impressions from what I was exposed to.

[Adam West]

I was going to say there was a name of baggy pants in the 1980's that were pretty popular that we called "parachute pants".

I wasn't sure if it was a made up name but just looked it up and there is a whole article about them on wikipedia.

Other than that, nothing really springs to mind.

[grayhank]

The only thing I can think of is Elbow macaroni. I used to call them "telephones". Eventually my whole family started calling them that. What kind of pasta are we having? Telephones.

I have more problems naming things now, mostly because I'm getting old and senile (probably early alzheimer's). Sometimes I just can't think of the word for the item. I refer to most things as thingys. Give me that thingy over there. Have you seen the thingy? Where's the thingy for the TV (followed by a pantomime hand gesture of me trying to change the channel)?

Names are even worse. I can spend days trying to remember an actor's name that I've seen billions of times...what was Gilligan's real name? It will drive me crazy.

[DocDrako]

My cousin and I called our action figures "Men" or "Dudes". Due to ignorance, we called our Luke Skywalker (Bespin Fatigues) figures by the name of Luke Skywalker (Bespin "Fat-ig-yoos") because we didn't know how to pronounce fatigues. After seeing The Empire Strikes Back my cousin and I called Tauntauns "Geegle Geegles" because we couldn't remember what they were called and that was the sound they made. All toy cars were "Hot Wheels" no matter if they were Matchbox, Corgi or whatever.

My brother had some Hot Wheels(?) Rumblers or whatever they were called. They each had a little rubber unarticulated rider, and we used to call them "Honda Men".

Our smaller figures were called "little dudes" and the 12 inch GI Joe sized figures were "big dudes". Very similar to Brown Bear's "little men" and "big men". So we might be playing with our Star Wars men and someone would say, "Let's play big dudes!"

The oddest term we used was when we wanted to play cops and robbers or something else where we would basically be pretending to be someone. We called that "Real Body" because we'd be using our real bodies and not action figures. It is so bizarre to say it now, but as kids it made total sense.

Cliff: Let's play real body! I'm Batman!
Me: Okay! I'm Buck Rogers!

And off we'd go into a universe where Batman and Buck Rogers knew each other and would fight side by side. We were pretty lame. But it was alot of fun.