Friday, March 5, 2010

pant...ies

The first thing to understand is that the world "pants" it doesn't really MEAN pants. Not like we think of them. It means underwear...panties...knickers. And for some reason I have the worst trouble with this. In Uganda it was the same case, and I caused my conservative professor great embarrassment when he asked why I was fidgeting in class and I proclaimed that it was nothing, I was just fixing my pants (you know how jeans get tight on your knees after too long sitting).
And freshman year, in Liverpool, when we were talking about if you tied someone's shoelaces together they wouldn't be able to remove their pants and Nikki overheard a very posh woman lean over to her child and say in hushed tones (though apparently not hushed enough tones) that "The Americans are talking about their underwear"


And this problem just continues for me.
And I am truly amazed how often I talk about my pants.
Really, you would think it wouldn't come up that much.

Things I have said that have caused snickers or open mouthed stares before they say (or think) "Oh... you mean trousers."


Oh hey, sorry I'm late. I totally spaced and didn't realize it was raining so I had to run back inside to throw on some pants

It's really cold so I ended up wearing two pairs of pants

I just bought snow pants. They were on sale

Oh I really like your pants.

I don't think I can pull off those really skinny spandex pants.

I can't wait to get home and get out of these pants into something more comfortable.

I love these pants.



Other words that don't mean the same thing: Fanny. It doesn't mean butt. It means (watch out kids, a naughty word is coming up... no real way around it) pussy. Which is why when we had been sitting in a lecture on uncomfortable chairs for hours and my butt was getting really sore and I leaned over to my friend steph and said "Man, I hope we get out soon. I'm getting some pretty epic fanny fatigue." She burst out laughing uncontrollably.


tl;dr version: "Camp" is a term that means flamboyantly gay, similar to when one might use the term "flaming"

2 comments:

  1. it was raining so i had to run back inside and throw on some pants.

    jajajaja.

    as i read this, you were outside without pants (the US sense) and only had pants (the brit sense) on.

    bc lets face it, sometimes it hard to remember to put clothes on before going out in public.

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  2. hey, hey, remember that time andrew put on lauren's pants???

    ReplyDelete