I need to get a word in the dictionary.
It is finally spring! I think... I mean, every time that I get to thinking that I can put my winter jacket away I don't because you just never know what may cause another snow storm. And I saw that the subject of this entry bought cute new rubber boots and I couldn't resist publishing this. It is spring, let us celebrate with rubber boots, rain coats, umbrellas, and being outside!
Enjoy...
It has come to my attention recently that my community may have created a word. I need to let everyone know that we created it so that when you use it you can reference us and make sure that it is known to everyone that this awesome made up word came from my home town. Maybe we'll get royalties from this word and be rich as kings? I doubt it though, I don't think language works that way. Selfie made it into the dictionary this year, I think our word is just as good, if not better.
We made up the word booter.
I'll give you a moment to take your guess as to what a booter is. Most people (mainly city people), when they hear booter for the first time give you a cock-eyed look and then say "a what!? Is it really that hard, you are wearing boots when I said it.
Give up?
It is when, usually in spring, you are out walking and your boot fills with water. I have heard different variations on this word but booter is our formal term for it. Getting a booter is awesome when you're little because you laugh and think that it is hilarious. That is, until you have to wear the inside-out bread bag over your sock foot so your sock doesn't get wet because your boots didn't dry out enough. This, my friends, is a booter.
I remember having several booters throughout my life and having to turn my boot upside down on the heater in the evening in the hopes to avoid the dreaded bread bag experience the next morning. However, in my house, the heat was turned down to near zero once it was warm enough for rubber boots. Hoping they were dry in the morning was more like asking for a miracle.
When your classmates walked along side of you on the way to school they would see the bread bag and ask, 'how'd you get that booter?' You would get to describe the colossal puddle in your neighbour's yard, or the ditch in front of the fire hall and how it was swirling with rain water from the thunderstorm last night, or the the most unfortunate of situations, admitting that your boot had a small hole in it somewhere (the most shameful of all booters). It was a right of passage, a soggy frustrating mistake that meant you were duped by a puddle. Gosh, it's like I'm talking about a bender, maybe that's what it was for us town rats*. I suppose the things that excite you in a small town are very different from life in the city.
The great thing about spring is when the ice freezes above the water and you get to crunch the ice without the threat of a booter. The ice breaks like glass beneath your feet and it is a race to pop the glass-ice first. But sometimes those air bubbles are secretly hiding frigid water in their depths.
My childhood friend got her first booter at a later age than most kids in our town. We were walking toward her house one night, it was early spring because I remember it was dark out. And, I think I take credit as the bad example in this story because I was encouraging her to step on the thin ice in the ditch. It was full of air pockets and I was being selfless telling her she could break the ice. I wasn't thinking that it was also full of water just slightly lower than those air bubbles. I was not a monster, this was no trick. She complied, stepped on and broke through, (natural occurrence) but then her boot got stuck. It got really stuck. We were smart enough to take her foot out of her boot. But the boot sat there, lodged in the ice. She teetered on the road balancing on one foot, the evening spring air icy, all 45 pounds of her shivering under the streetlight. I struggled and grunted but could not free the boot from the ditch's icy clutch. We were just behind my house so I ran home to get the strongest person I could find. I found my oldest brother, he knew what to do. He brought a sock and a bread bag, he cracked the ice then yanked the boot free. It didn't cross our minds to break the ice around the boot, I was unsure how deep the abyss truly was at this point and didn't want to lose my own boot or mittens in this unrelenting cavity filled with ice water. It required a sophisticated mind to solve that problem. Hey, we were in a bit of a panic, and we were little; our logical brains hadn't fully developed, after all I told her to step on ice in a ditch and she did.
I walked my friend home and into her house, I felt a little to blame for her predicament, I had encouraged her to step on the ice. I made sure she was inside but then, like a car accident, I couldn't look away as her mom leaned in on her and was so upset that she had gotten a booter. I was like, 'lady, relax, it's a booter, she can put her boot on the register and she'll be fine in the morning'. Of course I said this in my head because I had a healthy fear of adults. Then I realized that her mom wanted me to hear how upset she was and learn the error of my ways and turn toward the light. But I had three older brothers and getting a booter was a daily occurrence in my house. It happens, you put a bread bag on, and you move on. But in my friend's house a booter was apparently a serious offence.
I felt bad for her, and I slinked out the back door to head home. The next day at school she deliberately and very slowly showed me the bread bag that came out of the top of her boot as she put it in her locker in the boot room (I'm starting to think we just like the word boot in my hometown).
There you have it, a word that I am fairly certain my community created, I want booter to be in the dictionary. Perhaps I will have to settle for the urban dictionary, but I plan on spreading this word around the world. The next time your boot fills with water in the spring you can thank me that you have a precise term to describe the entire range of emotions and the event itself.
That's all.
Maybe not quite all just yet: *town rats was a term used to describe children that were actual residents of the small boarding school community that I grew up in, one might deduce that we liked making up our own words.
Now, for real, that's all.
Enjoy...
It has come to my attention recently that my community may have created a word. I need to let everyone know that we created it so that when you use it you can reference us and make sure that it is known to everyone that this awesome made up word came from my home town. Maybe we'll get royalties from this word and be rich as kings? I doubt it though, I don't think language works that way. Selfie made it into the dictionary this year, I think our word is just as good, if not better.
We made up the word booter.
I'll give you a moment to take your guess as to what a booter is. Most people (mainly city people), when they hear booter for the first time give you a cock-eyed look and then say "a what!? Is it really that hard, you are wearing boots when I said it.
Give up?
It is when, usually in spring, you are out walking and your boot fills with water. I have heard different variations on this word but booter is our formal term for it. Getting a booter is awesome when you're little because you laugh and think that it is hilarious. That is, until you have to wear the inside-out bread bag over your sock foot so your sock doesn't get wet because your boots didn't dry out enough. This, my friends, is a booter.
I remember having several booters throughout my life and having to turn my boot upside down on the heater in the evening in the hopes to avoid the dreaded bread bag experience the next morning. However, in my house, the heat was turned down to near zero once it was warm enough for rubber boots. Hoping they were dry in the morning was more like asking for a miracle.
The great thing about spring is when the ice freezes above the water and you get to crunch the ice without the threat of a booter. The ice breaks like glass beneath your feet and it is a race to pop the glass-ice first. But sometimes those air bubbles are secretly hiding frigid water in their depths.
My childhood friend got her first booter at a later age than most kids in our town. We were walking toward her house one night, it was early spring because I remember it was dark out. And, I think I take credit as the bad example in this story because I was encouraging her to step on the thin ice in the ditch. It was full of air pockets and I was being selfless telling her she could break the ice. I wasn't thinking that it was also full of water just slightly lower than those air bubbles. I was not a monster, this was no trick. She complied, stepped on and broke through, (natural occurrence) but then her boot got stuck. It got really stuck. We were smart enough to take her foot out of her boot. But the boot sat there, lodged in the ice. She teetered on the road balancing on one foot, the evening spring air icy, all 45 pounds of her shivering under the streetlight. I struggled and grunted but could not free the boot from the ditch's icy clutch. We were just behind my house so I ran home to get the strongest person I could find. I found my oldest brother, he knew what to do. He brought a sock and a bread bag, he cracked the ice then yanked the boot free. It didn't cross our minds to break the ice around the boot, I was unsure how deep the abyss truly was at this point and didn't want to lose my own boot or mittens in this unrelenting cavity filled with ice water. It required a sophisticated mind to solve that problem. Hey, we were in a bit of a panic, and we were little; our logical brains hadn't fully developed, after all I told her to step on ice in a ditch and she did.
I walked my friend home and into her house, I felt a little to blame for her predicament, I had encouraged her to step on the ice. I made sure she was inside but then, like a car accident, I couldn't look away as her mom leaned in on her and was so upset that she had gotten a booter. I was like, 'lady, relax, it's a booter, she can put her boot on the register and she'll be fine in the morning'. Of course I said this in my head because I had a healthy fear of adults. Then I realized that her mom wanted me to hear how upset she was and learn the error of my ways and turn toward the light. But I had three older brothers and getting a booter was a daily occurrence in my house. It happens, you put a bread bag on, and you move on. But in my friend's house a booter was apparently a serious offence.
I felt bad for her, and I slinked out the back door to head home. The next day at school she deliberately and very slowly showed me the bread bag that came out of the top of her boot as she put it in her locker in the boot room (I'm starting to think we just like the word boot in my hometown).
There you have it, a word that I am fairly certain my community created, I want booter to be in the dictionary. Perhaps I will have to settle for the urban dictionary, but I plan on spreading this word around the world. The next time your boot fills with water in the spring you can thank me that you have a precise term to describe the entire range of emotions and the event itself.
That's all.
Maybe not quite all just yet: *town rats was a term used to describe children that were actual residents of the small boarding school community that I grew up in, one might deduce that we liked making up our own words.
Now, for real, that's all.
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