In Shula’s sorority, as an incentive to attend classes, girls would be allowed to put their name in the “Skippy jar” (an empty jar of Skippy peanut butter) if they had not skipped classes at all for the week. Although I’m sure that my cousin must have been selected quite a few times as she considers the idea of skipping class horrifying, she wasn’t totally sure what the reward for getting your name pulled out of the “Skippy jar” was. She thinks “you got a 10 dollar gift card to Starbucks or something.”
Author Archives: Natalie Strom
Az men lebt, erleybt men.
“Az men lebt, erleybt men.”
My grandmother told me that this phrase was used by her mother if she or one of her siblings “was concerned about something, [if they] thought [they] didn’t do something right [they] didn’t learn something right.” Although not a direct translation, my grandmother took it to mean “Well it’s part of living, you learn from what happens.” My great grandmother’s native language was Yiddish, but it was important for her and my great grandfather that her children spoke English as they lived in America, so although my grandmother understands a lot of Yiddish she is more comfortable in English, interestingly the opposite situation in which her mother found herself.
The Chat-N-Cut
The Chat-N-Cut is when a person encounters a really long line at someplace like the grocery store or outside of a bar. If that person sees someone further up in the line that they know, even if that person is barely an acquaintance. They’ll go up to that person saying something like “Ohhh, can’t believe you’re here!” To cut the line.
I’ve experienced this practice many times but had never heard the term until Josh told it to me in relation to waiting in long lines at the grocery store near his fraternity house in college.
Branching
Josh went to college at University of Washington in Washington State, but he originally came from San Diego. When he first arrived he was really struck by how the two places, even though they’re in the same country and not really that far from each other, had such different cultures, especially when it comes to culture focusing on the climate and environment
He described a practice called “branching” that’s kind of an initiation ritual that’s often done to people who “fall asleep” or pass out from drinking. “Because there’s so many trees and branches” in the state, he said that it’s customary in the state of Washington to take one large branch or many branches and pile them on top of the sleeping person. Then you take lots of pictures to “document” the experience. He described it as every new person tends to get initiated into the “UDub” (a colloquial term for the university) by being branched.
CooKIEEE
I have often heard Josh refer to cookies with this weird sound and I finally asked him when he had started doing it.
“So as everyone who knows me well knows, I really love a good chocolate chip cookie. How-however I grew up knowing the cookie as being called [sound]. Because my grandpa was the first one to ever give me a cookie, and he introduced the cookie as [sound]. And the reason that he kept calling this delicacy [sound] instead of how every other child would call it, cookie, was because he used to go, in Brooklyn, to all the Brooklyn Dodger basebal games and there was a player called Harry Arthur Cookie…Lavagetto. So I used to be made fun of as a kid because I thought that…that beautiful thing that tasted so sweet and good was [sound] instead of just cookie. And I will still, to this day, call it [sound] because it’s way better that way.”