Teach Dalty American!

[Dalty]

As a basketball stat-keeper you must have got a lot of cheerleader action.

[Adam54]

Goiter, did your school also do the thing where football players would give the lady of their choice their unused jersey to wear on game day? Like if you had an away game, would the ladies wear the home jerseys around school all day? Or is that just a Minnesota tradition?

[Dalty]

This is like some weird cultish rituals that I had no insight of. Tell me more. Does a cheerleader get sacrificed to ward off bad omens before a game?

[Adam54]

My school didn't have cheerleaders once I passed...I think 8th grade was the last year of that. Only two girls went out for the squad and the school decided that didn't justify funding it.

Which I guess is a long way of saying I don't know. Good question.

[Dalty]

Was there a Queen Bee?

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Our school was really sketchy about the jerseys. We weren't supposed to let anybody else wear them, and they were only supposed to be worn on game day.

My stepbrother and I were "scolded" once by an older player when we wore our jerseys to the fair. It was one of those weird situations where, for whatever reason, the pep rally was the day before the game. The pep rally was on Friday and the game was on Saturday. We traditionally wore our jerseys to school the day of the pep rally. After the pep rally, my stepbrother, a mutual friend of ours, his younger sister, and I went to the fair.

My stepbrother and I left our jerseys on. Didn't really think anything of it. No one had told us we shouldn't. The older player approached us as we were suiting up for the game and gave us a pretty stern talking to. He'd been at the fair, he said. He'd seen us disrespecting the team by wearing the jerseys out like they were just any shirt, he said. I asked him why it even mattered and how it was we were supposed to know, since it wasn't any official "rule" as far as I knew. He got all up in my face, a-huffin' and a lookin' at me like I'd raped his grandmother in front of him. Then he got frustrated with me for not being intimidated by his alpha male display. He eventually calmed down and told me just not to do it again.

The older player eventually went on to a two-year college in hopes of building up some transfer credit for a four-year school with a football program. Don't think it panned out. Married someone from his grade. Has five kids with her. Lives about fifteen miles from our old high school. Seems happy.

The summer before his senior year, he dated someone who had just finished sixth grade. I feel like this behavior was more inappropriate than wearing a jersey to a fair, but whatevs.

The person he dated who had just finished her sixth grade year now lives two houses down from my mother. I used to work with her mother when I was a CNA at the nursing home in my home town.

[Dalty]

Alabama, ladies and gentleman.

[Mal Shot First]

The summer before his senior year, he dated someone who had just finished sixth grade. I feel like this behavior was more inappropriate than wearing a jersey to a fair, but whatevs.

Aren't most sixth-graders 16 years old in Alabama?

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Now, Mal. Most of them are fourteen, tops.

[Dalty]

And cousins?

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Sure. But distant. A lot of the time.

[Dalty]

It's a big state.

[Dalty]

Seriously? I need to watch more American news. Looks like crazy fun!

[Mal Shot First]

He's like a British Jon Stewart!

I liked the Dele Adebola joke.

[Dalty]

What's a broiler?

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

I understand it to mean two things. One version of "broiler" is the white-feathered, fatty kind of chicken you find in chicken houses. You know, the ones born and raised to be slaughtered and sent to grocery stores.

I think broilers get this name from one of the methods used to cook them. In standard U.S. American ovens, there's a small drawer below the main stove compartment. This drawer is called a "broiler" because it "broils" food. What does it mean to "broil" food, you ask? It's my understanding that we use this term to describe cooking/grilling when the heating element comes from above.

I might be wrong about both of these, but this is how I've always heard the terms used. I'm sure Wikipedia has more/better information.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

To be honest, on further reflection, I don't know that the heating element in our broilers always comes exclusively from the top. I think some broilers can be pretty fancy and can offer you a variety of heating options. It's probably the case that broilers used to be more limited and that, even though some of them offer a variety of heating options that aren't limited to broiling, they're all still called broilers.

[Adam54]

What does it mean to "broil" food, you ask? It's my understanding that we use this term to describe cooking/grilling when the heating element comes from above.

God's Kitchen?

[Mal Shot First]

No, the beach.

[Adam54]

If Dalty would be so kind as to let me borrow his thread for a second, I have a question for those of you from the Missouri and further south parts of the United States.

I'm currently engaged in a bit of mild online flirting with a Star Tribune reporter. I complimented her reporting skills and she replied with "Oh go on with you!"

She had also mentioned how she's not a native Minnesotan, and I believe she's from Missouri somewhere, as her Twitter feed informed me during the baseball playoffs that she's a huge Royals fan.

Is "Oh go on with you!" a Southern thing? Or maybe just a specific to her thing? I've heard "Oh go on!" at many points in my life, but honestly never heard "Oh go on with you!" before. Where's that from?

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

This is what she means:

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Only kidding.

It's said in the South. I feel like it's said in Britain, too. The meaning should be pretty clear. It's meant to suggest both that the person recognizes what you're saying to be (potentially insincere) flattery and that the person is at least partially receptive to said flattery.

[Adam54]

Oh, yeah, I didn't phrase that very well. I fully smelled what she was cookin'. I just was confused as to it's origin. Thanks to you and Elton for clearing that up for me.

[Adam54]

Aside: "I smelled what you were cookin'" and variants thereof have now entered my daily vocabulary.

I feel like you guys are at least partially to blame for this.

[Dalty]

So a broiler is basically a grill?