Wednesday, December 26, 2007

A toboggan is NOT a hat!


PLEASE, all Southerners, STOP calling knit hats toboggans. They are hats, tooks, or some other name, but NOT a toboggan. A toboggan is a wooden sled. I have no idea what bonehead decided to give a hat a sled's name, but one of my pet peeves here in the South is the calling of hats toboggans.

When I first moved to North Carolina, I worked for NCSU Public Safety, a full police department. I remember listening to the police frequency (I did fire and rescue for the same department) and hearing about a suspect in a larceny that was wearing a toboggan on his head. I thought that it should be easy to find someone carrying around a big wooden sled on his head in an area that has no snow.

Just yesterday at Christmas, the little boy that I am spending time with was given a hat and scarf set with his name on them. He was told that he was given a toboggan. I quipped that it was a funny looking sled and to not even try to convince me that it was the name of a hat.

Canadians and northern Yankees know that the term "took" (long oo rather than the past tense of take) is acceptable, eh? A knit hat. Anything but a sled.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Troy, every good Southerner worth his or her "grits" knows a toboggan is a winter hat and not a sled! LOL. Everyone, (even Yankees), should know that a sled (wooden or otherwise) for playing in the snow, is just that, a sled! Besides, good common sense tells everybody that you need a 4WD pickup truck to play in the snow! Now there's a sled buddy! Next your gonna be telling me that Barbecue is something to cook on instead of gourmet food!!! I mean we do cook on a grill, eh? Keep up the good work!

Anonymous said...

Wait till you hear someone mention "VIE-ee'-nuh" (rhymes with hyena) sausage or "ool" for oil and "tarz" for tires. You're in Johnston County and you're just noticing this? Oh, that's right. You've been around broadcasters who know how to speak. Wait a minute...even they murder the King's English. Let's go have a frap!
(Guess that would be called a "frah'-yup)