"Eh, put your slippers on and take out the rubbish! And you made home lunch, yeah?"
Most of us who live aloha think nothing of that small bit of dialogue. It's clear that the speaker is telling the listener to put their shoes on to take out the trash. It is also obvious that the speaker wants to ensure that the listener made the speaker lunch to take to school/work/ random alley.
Oh, sure, we have beautiful words, such as "aloha" and "mahalo." And it's true that those words will buy you a smile anywhere in the world. But who'd think "home lunch" was specific to the islands?
When I was a kid at Lunalilo Elementary School, I wanted to speak pidgin so that I could hang with the cool kids. But my pidgin was (and is) horrible. (I blame my mom, who moved to the 50th state from Big Sky Country.)
My pidgin did, however, grab the attention of my classmates who had great fun making me say, "Eh, brah, howzit?!" It always sounded more like, "Ay, bra, hau-zit?" And when I tried to relax, it sounded more like "Aaay, braaa, hau-zit?" after a case of beer.
So naturally, when I moved to San Diego, I thought I would be among my linguistic brethren.
That I'd blend.
But there's something to be said about taking the girl from the islands, but not taking the islands from the girl.
I fast discovered that there are several words that quickly ID me as a Hawaii export.
Slippers
While I sat in class one day, I complained about Derek wearing slippers everywhere we went. Everyone around me looked at me like I was married to a lunatic.
"That is weird," said a chic young woman in front of me.
"Well, it's not that weird. Most of us wear slippers in Hawaii."
More odd looks. Just then it hit them. "Ooohhhh, you mean flip-flops."
Flip-flops? "No, I meant 'slippers.'"
"They're flip-flops."
"Whatchu mean 'flip-flops.' No one is flipping and flopping around here," I laughed.
Slippers, I was told, are like bed slippers... those fuzzy slippers that your grandma wears when it's cold.
"They're called slippers, because you slip them on," my friend said.
Flip-flops. That's one I'm leaving here on the continent.
Rubbish
"Hey, Gen! Call it rubbish again! That's so British!"
There is nothing British about it, I insisted to my friends. In Hawaii, we have rubbish cans, trash cans, and cans for opala.
This is the point where I usually receive blank stares.
"Huh. OK, but can you say 'rubbish' again?"
"This is rubbish."
Home lunch
Living on one income can be hard and the way some of us alleviate the suffering is by packing lunch.
One of my friends asked me if I wanted to buy lunch at our school deli. "Nah, I have home lunch."
"What's that?"
"Home lunch. You know, I brought lunch from home."
"That makes sense. But we call that sack lunch here."
I like home lunch better. Sack lunch doesn't always apply. Some of us have lunchboxes. Some of us have lunch bags. And only a few of us actually have sacks.
Pop
Apparently approximately half the continental United States likes to have pop with their sack lunches.
Pop to me meant a number of things: your dad, that snapping fruity candy, the white little things you throw down to freak out your friends during the Fourth of July, and that dance that went out with '80s - most of which are not ideal meal accompaniments.
My friend Becca taught me that people from Ohio use "pop" when they want a soda.
Almost daily leading up to last semester's finals, she would fanatically purchase a pop for her lunch. "I need my pop," she'd smile.
After about a week of Becca's pop, I grew fond of it as well. During dinner one night, I told Derek about how I really felt like having a pop.
"A what?!"
"A pop."
"It's a soda! Soh-dah. Soda. Not pop, but soda."
"But Becca calls it 'pop.'"
"Yeah, well, we're from Hawaii. It's a soda. Soda. There is no pop."
To this day, Derek refuses to acknowledge pop's existence.
Yeah
The Canadians have "eh," we have "yeah."
'Nuff said, yeah?
Eh
Finally, you know you're comfortable with someone when you can call them with a simple "eh!"
Back home, I thought nothing of calling up my friend Jocelyn and saying, "Eh! Whatcha doing?"
Joc would usually answer with "I dunno. Whatcha doing?"
Here, it came out accidentally with a group of my classmates. "Eh, Becca!"
Becca looked up. We laughed for a quick minute as I realized how comfortable I've become with my friends in San Diego - comfortable enough to let the real me come out.
The one who still puts on her slippers when she throws her home lunch in the rubbish, yeah?
