penismightier.com

I was visiting some friends in Missouri recently, and the topic of my northern colloquialisms came up. Specifically, someone had issues with calling a carbonated beverage “pop”. So started a long winded conversation about “Soda”, “Pop”, and “Coke” across the country. Everyone has had these conversations, so I cant say that I lent anything new to the topic.

In the end everyone could agree that calling a Pepsi “Coke” was stupid, but no one could let bygones be bygones and agree that soda or pop were equally valid.

Then somehow the topic changed to drinking fountains instead.

See, many in Wisconsin call a drinking fountain a “Bubbler”. This is due to the Kohler company, which is based in Wisconsin. The first drinking fountains were called bubblers, but thanks to Kohler patenting the term its use is limited to certain areas that adopted the bubbler early. In those areas it is used much like “Kleenex” or… well… “Coke”

After a few minutes of arguing about bubblers I had to put a stop to the conversation. Again, we’ve all had conversations like this before. They didn’t have anything new to lend to it and their minds were made up already. So I came out and said “I dont call it bubbler or drinking fountain. I call it ‘Whites Only’ because thats what it says on the sign”.

My friends got quiet and started to look around nervously. They didn’t want to talk to me anymore.

I added something new to the conversation at least.

Plus we avoided the whole “ATM vs TYME machine” conversation.

Bad Taste doesn't just come in beverage form.