Associations that mean something to you but nothing to anyone else...

[BlueCross]

So in my youth (B.C., or Before Car), my buddies and I would walk downtown to go to the movies or whatever, and sometimes, usually after the movie, we would stop and get something more to eat (assuming we had any cash left).

There was this one very small (and fairly greasy) hamburger place.  Not a drive through but instead a tiny restaurant.  It had maybe 6-8 counter seats and a small table or two.  If you sat at the counter, you could watch them make the burgers or whatever on the hot, flat grill.  The 'cheapo' hamburgers (I remember them costing a quarter!) were really quite good, even though they only consisted of a grilled bun, a small patty, mustard, and some chopped onions.

Anyway, one day a guy ordered a Denver Omelette (in case you don't know, it's an egg omelette with onions, red and green bell peppers, bacon and/or ham; quite tasty), and the Old Lady Cook (she was a sight to behold; at least 60ish and heaviesh, with incredibly bright red lipstick and bright blush on her cheeks, and long fiery disheveled hair, and a cigarette dangling from her lips; really) (I think she was the owner, or wife of the owner; never saw her smile, and rarely talked)... anyway, when Old Lady Cook heard the order, I heard her mutter "goddam Denver omelette" under her breath, and then proceded to make it quite well.

Clearly she didn't like to make it; I guess the amount of work involved was not worth the payment or something, I don't know...  but now, whenever I see something that is quite nice or quite cool but is annoyingly frustrating to make or do, I think "goddam Denver omelette."

Well... wasn't that interesting...

[Bubonic]

Once, when driving through a moderately dodgy neighbourhood, my fiancée and I saw some scantily-clad young "ladies" sitting on the roof of a house.  Now, just so we're clear, these girls were not wearing swimming costumes, but the short skirts and revealing tops that you expect to see staggering out of a dive at 3am.  And the building was a single-storey dwelling with no architectural means of gaining access to the roof--they had just swung a ladder up against the house.  This struck us as very strange.

Now it just so happened that at time we witnessed this we had been discussing a contemporary Samuel L Jackson movie.  As a result, the phrase "Skanks On A Roof" was coined.  Now, whenever we see a young woman of questionable repute, dressed in slut-wear, we privately tell her to go and climb a roof.

Or if either of us is annoying the other, it's "Go climb a roof."

People look at us oddly.

[Solwyn]

I grew up in a small town called Elizabeth outside of Denver, Colorado. We had a general store and a gas station but in order to go to the "real" store (a larger general store and gas station) we had to drive to Parker, which was another couple miles away. So it's safe to say that we were pretty far from civilization. Even then, most of the roads were dirt roads and the developments were miles apart. So the family would pile into the jeep, go to a development, and walk from house to house, then pile back in etc.

So invariably, every year, it would snow that night. And invariably, every year, some weird family would give us popcorn balls instead of candy.

So it's not a terribly common association, but Halloween always reminds me of popcorn balls, the first snow of the year, and long walks down dirt roads with scary trees.

Of course we moved to Texas soon after and Halloween reminded me of people handing out Bibles instead of candy, sweltering heat even in the end of October, and dodging drunken parents giving hayrides down the major roads.

[Sylvee Bee]

 


I can't think of anything like this in my own life, but I enjoy reading yours. Great post. *nods*

[The SysMan]

"I've got a Ham but I'm not a hamster."

Thank you, Bill Bailey

[Tink]

So in my youth (B.C., or Before Car), my buddies and I would walk downtown to go to the movies or whatever, and sometimes, usually after the movie, we would stop and get something more to eat (assuming we had any cash left).

There was this one very small (and fairly greasy) hamburger place.  Not a drive through but instead a tiny restaurant.  It had maybe 6-8 counter seats and a small table or two.  If you sat at the counter, you could watch them make the burgers or whatever on the hot, flat grill.  The 'cheapo' hamburgers (I remember them costing a quarter!) were really quite good, even though they only consisted of a grilled bun, a small patty, mustard, and some chopped onions.

Anyway, one day a guy ordered a Denver Omelette (in case you don't know, it's an egg omelette with onions, red and green bell peppers, bacon and/or ham; quite tasty), and the Old Lady Cook (she was a sight to behold; at least 60ish and heaviesh, with incredibly bright red lipstick and bright blush on her cheeks, and long fiery disheveled hair, and a cigarette dangling from her lips; really) (I think she was the owner, or wife of the owner; never saw her smile, and rarely talked)... anyway, when Old Lady Cook heard the order, I heard her mutter "goddam Denver omelette" under her breath, and then proceded to make it quite well.

Clearly she didn't like to make it; I guess the amount of work involved was not worth the payment or something, I don't know...  but now, whenever I see something that is quite nice or quite cool but is annoyingly frustrating to make or do, I think "goddam Denver omelette."

Well... wasn't that interesting...

I remember those days when movies were so affordable that you could get something to eat afterward. The Saturday afternoon, double matinee was only 75 cents and for $2, you could get all the popcorn, soda and candy you could handle. Only difference is, when we got out of the movies, we went to the pizza place where for 75 cents, you could get a huge slice of pizza and a coke.
The only thing interesting that ever happened there, happened to my sister. She had ordered burger and fries, and when she went to shake the ketchup bottle to make sure it didn't run, ketchup flew all over the place. She's a redhead, but she should have been blonde. She never checked to see if the cap was on the bottle tightly, so she and her friends wore a little ketchup.
We also told her she had  to change the air in her tires one spring, because they had the fall/winter air in them, and she believed us. Same sister turned her new Carmen Ghia into toast because she didn't realize you had to check your oil now and then. This might have been acceptable in other households, but my Dad is a mechanic and had his own garage, so he was pretty pissed off when she said "I didn't know you had to put oil in it, I thought it was just gas". 

[Doombot]

Same sister turned her new Carmen Ghia into toast because she didn't realize you had to check your oil now and then. This might have been acceptable in other households, but my Dad is a mechanic and had his own garage, so he was pretty pissed off when she said "I didn't know you had to put oil in it, I thought it was just gas". 

I used to be like that but I took care of it REAL quick after discovering that I needed to change the oil FILTER. There were metal shavings in the oil. I'll never forget the Broads don't know nuttin' look that the mechanic gave me.

I'm probably on the high side of taking car of my car now. I don't bother changing the oil filter even though I probably could. Why crawl around in the oil when I can have someone do it for under $20.00?

[Turjan]

I have an association which probably will mean something to everyone here who's ever used the ingame console of an FPS game.

I live in a rural area, but the road outside my house can be quite busy sometimes. So whenever I'm in the car with my bro, I'm on lookout duty keeping watch to see if anything's coming before we pull out into the road.
And there almost always is something.
Even if the road's been quiet for an hour, the moment we try to pull out, a car appears as if from nowhere. It's like someone was waiting for us to pull out just so they could gun it along the road and get in our way. You could say it's almost like the car had been...spawned  :inquisitive:

But if we creep right out so we can see far enough up the road, cars appear less often. Crazy, but that's what it feels like  :confused:

Now, anyone who's ever played an FPS game with the console running at the top of the screen will probably have seen the following statement at one time or another : "cannot spawn X because player can see spawn point" or words to that effect. Evidently, this is what must be happening when we can see far enough up the road 

So nowadays when my brother is at the wheel, instead of asking me if the road is clear, he's taken to saying "Can player see spawn point?"