Mariko recently posted about the soda vs. pop terminology question, which got me thinking about jimmies.

I spent the first eleven years of my young life in Massachusetts, was raised by natives of Pittsburgh and then we all moved to Ohio. This led to some confusion on the naming of various items. Coke, soda, soft drinks, pop! (I still can't get used to pop and how long has it been? thirty years almost?) Roof or roof? Route or route? (with those it's not the spelling, it's the pronunciation).

And rotary. Everyone in MA knows what a rotary is - it's what you follow when you get off the Bourne Bridge as you're heading down to the Cape! In Ohio, it's a group of businessmen and if you do run across a rotary it's simply called a circle.

But jimmies. Jimmies are special. I get blank stares when I order them on ice cream out here in the Midwest. I'm of the jimmies=chocolate sprinkles crowd, though some believe that the term also includes the multi-colored version.

Mint-chocolate chip ice cream with jimmies.
It doesn't get much better than that!