RunRev vs RealBasic (wandered a wee bit off topic)

[Marty Billingsley]

> "Lynch, Jonathan" <BNZ2 at CDC.GOV>
>
> I have a friend who worked in the U.K. for a few months. When she first got there, she wore her waist pack to work. This is a thing that wraps around your hips and has a pouch for carrying stuff. One day she she had set it down, and was looking for it. When she could not find it, she started asking her colleagues if they had seen it. Specifically, she kept asking everyone if they had seen her "fanny pack" - which is a perfectly acceptable term for a waist pack in the United States. In the U.S., the term "fanny" is a mostly non-offensive term for a person's bum.
>
> She just couldn't understand why the entire office was laughing at her. The way she tells it, some of her office mates were practically on the floor, laughing so hard they could not breathe.
>
> Well, apparently, the term "fanny" in the U.K. does not refer to the bum, it refers to a woman's clitoris. After they were able to speak, they informed her of exactly what she was saying, and she was so embarrassed she thought she would just die.

Rather like my Australian colleague who didn't understand why
her fellow teacher gaped when she asked him if he had a rubber.

(in the US a rubber is a condom, in other English-speaking countries
it's an eraser)

  - marty