Americanisms + Cultural Touch Points!
Americans! I need your help!
My editor has noticed I’m not an actual American! (Shows me for trying to skate by lol!)
I need a couple of phrases to up the Americana in my latest short story.
1) I need the most American word for an early childhood center/kindergarten/creche/playgroup etc. That place your parents sent you for a few hours a day when you were 3-4 years old so they could have some peace and quiet.
2) Is there some sort of distinctly American animal a small suburban child might have encountered in the early 90s? You see videos of bears and mountain lions wandering through people’s backyards but how common was it really? It could be a bird, or like a crocodile … do those actually exist in suburban America?
3) What was the cool snack to have in your lunchbox in the late 90s/early 2000s?
3b) Were Twinkies a thing by this point?
4) Was there a particular word for the place you put your schoolbooks and pencil case back when your bag stayed in the hallway and your desk didn’t have it’s own storage? I’ve used cubby, but that might be a British/Kiwi word.
5) School athletics day. Is this a thing and did you call it that?
6) Favourite tag-based game of your American childhood? Would require a ‘home base’ of sorts.
7) The person in charge of your high school - head, principal, dean..?
Many thanks for any and all assistance!
Obligatory question mark?
1) I always used the term Preschool. Some say Pre-K though!
2) Unfortunately, that question depends on the area of the States you’re in. For me, I always just crossed paths with bunnies, squirrels, the occasional duck at a lake, and always birds. But, if you were lucky (not so lucky honestly) you would come across a possum anywhere. It’s honestly one of the ugliest creatures we have here. It’s even more awesome when it plays dead and scares you half to death when it “comes back to life”.
3) For me it was always Gushers or a Fruit Roll-up. Even a Fruit-by-the-Foot was amazing. Or if you were the lucky kid, a Cosmic Brownie was the best thing on the planet.
4) We use the term lockers, but those are generally used only for middle school and up. Younger than that most kids would use their desks, but I remember as a young child in kindergarten using cubbies as well!
5) If you’re talking about a Pep Rally then I suppose! But those were more or less just for school spirit. I only participated in one “sports day” for a school of mine and it was our 3rd Grade Olympics.
6) Freeze-tag was always amazing as well as TV-Tag. We pretty much made anything base as kids, but there was only one base and it was most likely in an incredibly inconvenient spot.
7) From Kindergarten to 12th Grade we have principals in public and some private schools. Many of the high-end private schools will have a “Headmaster” or something of that sort. Colleges have presidents.
I hope this helps and I certainly meant to get to it sooner! Vicki showed it to me and asked me to help out. :) I hope it helps!
