Aglets

Have you ever played the game Balderdash? Well, we used to play it with Randi's in-laws, JimA and DebB and it was a lot of fun. I'm putting that on my list of things to do next time we're home.

Anyway, the gist of the game is to define a word in such a way that everybody thinks your definition is the actual meaning of the word.

Like "aglets".

Know what those are?

Those plastic things at the end of shoestrings.

I'll probably forget that in a day or two and if the subject ever comes up, I'll say I don't know what they're called. It's that way with a lot of things we encounter on a daily basis yet have no idea what they're actually called.

We all know what an ampersand and a tilde are. Okay, in case you don't . . . it's & & ~

But do you know what an octothorpe is?

The # sign. We used to call it the "number" sign, but now it's mostly called the "pound" sign.

Most of the time it doesn't matter if you know the actual name for a common item.

Like for example, the ferrule.

That's the metal band between pencil and eraser. I know a couple of people whom it didn't take long to get down to the ferrule. Then that meant going for the big gun - the Pink Pearl.

My mother always called the umbrella a bumbershoot. I just thought it was a made-up word, but it is in fact a synonym for umbrella.

Kind of like catawampus. When something's all out of whack. You Southerners know what I'm talkin' 'bout.

So the next time your listening to a recording and you miss something on the menu, listen for "if you want to go back to the main menu, press the octothorpe". You'll know just what to do.