"Now I always say "lift." Even though he is not lifting me."

In N 'awlins (New Orleans), my mother never got used to her neighbor saying, "I'm going out, can I carry you somewhere?"

In Kansas, grocery stores 'sacked' your purchases...here they 'bag' them. Now, 'bag' sounds more reasonable.
Most of my life I stood 'in line' for a movie (film?), now most people say 'on line'....and many of those from the British Isles say 'queue'. I visualize a 'line' as the assortment of people, one behind the other, not as an imaginary chalk mark on the ground we all stand 'on'.

It's not easy to assimilate it all and make decisions.


I have lived in the American South and in the Mid-West before moving East when I was almost 40. I have heard SO many different ways of describing and naming things and activities that it has sensitized me to my own habits, and I make an effort to use 'reasonably' universal and clear terminology when I have any idea that I might be mis-understood.
   I am a bit puzzled by those who either don't KNOW any other way to speak, or cling stubbornly to "their" ways, no matter what the occasion or whether they will be understood or not.