Semantics

By my count, the house that I grew up in contained 24 rooms and 5.5 bathrooms, from the basement to the third floor, not including closets. In sharp contrast, I choose to live in a house that is less than 2,000 square feet (less than half of 20 Maple’s first floor alone) but that’s for another time.

Like me, my mother is a lover of words. So in addition to the usual words (bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, etc) the lexicon of my childhood home included a powder room, a front hall closet, back hall closet, vestibule, butler’s pantry, parlor and library. My siblings and I re-named these rooms by their use, so the “back hall closet,” which housed soccer balls, shin guards, tennis rackets and balls and other sports accessories was called the “sports closet.”

We are WASPs, so as you can imagine, this resulted in some fiery showdowns:
Mom: “Will you put your ice skates/cleats/racket in the back hall closet?”
Child: “You mean the sports closet?”
Mom: “Yes, the BACK HALL closet.”

Recently, my brother-in-law was looking for something in our house; let’s just call it a hoosywhatsy for the sake of this story.
Me: “Oh sure, it’s in the media room”
B-i-L: “You mean the tv room?”
Me: “Uh, yeah, the media room.”

Ahem.

Hello, Kettle? This is Pot. You’re black.