In the "Ice cream float" someone posted a link to the different lingo to describe these wonderful concoctions. One of the names was "spider". A poster said he would start calling it that so his kids could tell others they ate spiders for desert. This got me thinking about something and I didn't want to hijack that thread anymore than I already had.

I grew up in a small town close to a military base. When I was real young we had very few restaurants/fast food places. This was before McD's, BK, Sonic. We had a Starks (like DQ) this may be the same business Starks and maybe one or two more places.

Anyway, one of the places that had been around since the 1950's called their cherry-coke a "Suicide". It was a coke with a pump or two of the cherry syrup from a big white plastic container mixed in. Never knew why they called it a suicide.

One summer my uncle and cousin from an even much smaller town came to visit. My sister and I wound up riding around with our cousin - we weren't old enough to drive. My cousin was really paranoid about the soldiers around town. She just knew she was going to be raped and/or raped and killed. We HAD to keep all the windows up in the car. Couldn't even roll one down to yell "hi" to someone you knew and drove by.

During our travels we drove by the place that made suicides. My sister (Mouth-of-the-South) promptly asks my cousin if she likes suicides. Cousin says "NO I DON'T LIKE SUICIDES, WHY WOULD ANYBODY EVER LIKE THEM". So "Mouth" goes on to tell Cousin that she loves them and they are her favorite thing in the world.

The car went silent and we went home. It was a couple years later before Mouth and I even realized why our cousin was so weird. She seemed really cool at first but then started acting strange whenever she was around us after that night. Turned out she was more afraid of the "midget suicide cult" inside the car with her than she was of the soldiers outside who were going to rape her.

We had no freaking idea that OUR TOWN was one of the very few if not the only one that had a cherry-coke they called a "suicide". We figured everybody knew what a suicide was and that it was a cherry-coke. Everyone in our town knew what it was. You could go the parish fair and order a suicide from the Lion's Club or Shriners and they would hand you a cherry coke. I'm not sure if we even realized there was another such thing called "suicide" at that point in our lives.

It became a pretty big joke after that and our cousin started talking to us and would even be alone with us again. Really is pretty funny now. Unfortunately within the past couple years the old place that you pulled up to and ate in your car or at the picnic table out front - no inside seating - and ordered "Suicides" has closed. Will always have one funny memory of the old place.

Back to topic, have ever gotten a really strange reaction from someone when telling them what you have eaten or drank? Weird family name for a food item or maybe a town's strange name for a drink?