What do you call this and have you ever heard it referred to as a taboggin? I was born and raised in the Chattanooga, TN area and until the past year, have always called them that. Was it just something me and my family did or is it more widespread?
Judging from some friends’ reactions, specifically **LaurAnge **and Gr8Kat, I’m some sort of deviant freak which, I suppose, isn’t all that different from others’ reactions to finding out I’m Southern anyway but that’s a different post altogether.
I use to work in the clothing section of a sports store in Austin and one day these guys and their girlfriends come up to me and ask where the taboggins were. I have no idea what a toboggin is either growing up in a place that almost never snows but I know its something like a sled perhaps a kind of sled. So I told them we didn’t sell sleds. They looked at me like I was crazy. One of their girlfriends finally explained that it was a word her small town east Texas boyfriend used for a knit cap or beany as it is more popularly known in Austin. So to answer you question, its called a taboggin in places in rural East Texas as well.
I’ve lived in TN my whole life and that ain’t no toboggan. A toboggan is loooooooooooong. I had one that went all the way down my back. I haven’t seen one in ages though.
I’m aware they’re called toboggans, but I think that’s from when I lived in Rhode Island or Virginia.
[hijack]
It reminds me of a story of my youth, though – they were giving me an IQ test when I was about six, and one of the words I had to match to a picture was “toboggan”.
I lived in Florida. I had no freaking clue what that thing was.
I also remember the game where the teacher would put various things onto an overhead projector (is that what those things are called? with the mirror and the lens on the weird arm and the lit glass plate you put things on) and have us identify them by their silhouette. The one that really threw me was just round. Just a circle. Apparently it was a coaster.
I had never used a coaster. I would set my drink down on the dining room table on the placemat 'cause that’s what we had. It didn’t go anywhere else.
I grew up in Alabama and have relatives all over the state and we always called them taboggins. We never got them confused with the sleds because being that far south very few people owned sleds.
When I went to grad. school in Ohio, people thought I was a freak for using that term for a winter cap.
Here in Tallahassee I rarely hear them called taboggins and if I do hear that word, I always assume the speaker grew up in the deep South.
When I was living in the south for a couple of years (Raleigh, NC), I heard them called ‘toboggans’, too. I thought it was odd.
Being from NY, just south of the Canadian border, I’ve always referred to it as a ‘touque’. People in Raleigh looked at me like I had 3 heads when I said that. But so does my husband and he grew up in the Albany area. I didn’t realize it was a Canadian thing until I moved downstate.
I’ve lived in the south most of my life. I call them knit caps or stocking caps. I would understand what they meant if someone referred to it as a tobbogan but would probably think that person had lived in the north for a period of time – probably because we don’t get to use our tobbogans here very often – on our heads or on our hills.
