“What’s a snood?” I asked my husband while I sat on the sofa perusing a new clothing catalog.
“I don’t know,” he said, chuckling. “What’s snood with you?”
“I didn’t say what’s new,” I said lowering the magazine. “I said, ‘what’s a snood?'”
“What’s a snood?” he repeated.
“That’s what I’m asking. There’s a sweater in this catalog that comes with a detachable snood.”
I stared intently at the sweater, looking for some part of it that might look particularly snoodlike. But since I didn’t know what a snood was, I didn’t know what to look for. Obviously other people knew what a snood was as it was a feature of this sweater, but I did not. Somewhere in my fashion education I had missed the memo about snoods, detachable or otherwise. I wondered if it was maybe one of those weird combination words like “skort,” which was a combination of skirt and shorts, or “spork,” a spoon and a fork. Honestly, I was not a fan of either word. Somehow “skort” and “spork” seemed like crimes against humanity. Or at least crimes against the dictionary.
I had just sort of, kind of gotten used to skorts, when along came “jorts,” which are jean shorts for men. I suppose the fashion industry thought more men would buy jean shorts if they had a cool name, but this was a major fail because only guys who used sporks would likely wear shorts called jorts.
Skirting the idea of skorts and jorts, I recalled when I had gone to the department store to get a pair of jeans but could only find lots of pairs of “jeggings.” Jeggings, I was told by a young salesgirl in the jeans department with obvious impatience, was a combination of jeans and leggings. Again, I didn’t have a problem with the concept, just the name.
“They look like jeans, but they feel like leggings,” she had insisted.
“Well, I look 50, but I feel like 70,” I’d said to her. “What does that make me?”
“Old,” she’d replied.
Not wanting to make too much of a big deal about this, I tried on a pair without saying the name and discovered that a legging by any other name is still a legging and still did not look good around my cankles.
But back to the snood.
I turned to the internet and looked up “snood.” The very first definition I saw said that a snood was a type of hood. I glanced back at the picture in the catalog and saw that the sweater did indeed have a detachable hood. So, that made sense, although I didn’t know why they didn’t just call it a hood.
“Hey,” said my husband, who was also looking on the internet. “Did you know that a snood is also the fleshy protuberance attached near the base of a turkey’s beak?”
I gave him a dirty look.
“Thanks for your help,” I said dryly. “When I’m done, remind me to pick you up another pair of jorts.”
Tracy Beckerman is the author of the Amazon Bestseller, “Barking at the Moon: A Story of Life, Love, and Kibble,” available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble online! You can visit her at www.tracybeckerman.com. To find out more about Tracy Beckerman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
