Sitting here, laughing. It's pretty pathetic when I have to seek out my g'kids to find out what a particular anacronym means. Not that I'm opposed to them, but having been a military brat, and then a military wife, I didn't realise they were going to invade civilian life.

One has to be comfortable in the milieu of their particular generation to function with them. My heart is still in the era of the crank-down window and lever seat. I have had my mother's jeep for many years now, and it has power windows. I used to tease her about how she opened every window in the car from the driver's seat, and locked and unlocked all the doors before she found the right button. I have turned into my mother. I suppose anyone behind me at a light is cracking up, watching windows going up and down.

No, I don't know what a POS car is, and I'm too lazy to look it up. Pile of **** lol.

Piece of shoot (except insert a potty word instead). Close Suzy!

according to the urban dictionary:

"Not just an old american rust bucket P.O.S. car, but any ride that is slightly lees than pimp. A hooptie is any vehicle which was once nice in its heyday..."

You know, I am as guilty as anybody else about using that expression. But, since that is really what it stands for, it makes me sigh. I guess I'm glad that they're using initials if it comes up in common conversation.

I also dislike hearing the word 'pimp' used in the vernacular for anything duded up. My little g'daughter was talking about a television show about fixing up those POS trucks, and Pimp was in the title of the show. When I was her age, I didn't even know what a pimp was. Now, it's used as a verb with desirable overtones? Sigh again. We don't even pretend anymore to pull punches. Do we?

Thanks people, I gather that it doesn't have to really
be a pile of..er..stuff, it can just be not pimped up.

I've got to agree, it seems sometimes that the Anything Goes attitude has gone to far. I can remember when people didn't say "pregnant" in public. You even whispered when you mentioned that the big blimp passing by was "expecting."

I'm glad to see that we are less prudish about such things. But at the same time, I regret the openness on TV ads about things such as sexual disfunction and birth control. Where (and how)do we draw the line?

Lol - I guess I drive a P.O.S then, well you learn something new everyday!

I drive a thirteen year old Jeep Cherokee........but it's still a honey. I have driven POS before....several of them. The last one was my work truck. You could see the road whizzing by through the floorboard below your feet on the passenger side. She still ran like a gazelle, however, with over 200K on her. I sold her to a party who is still driving her. The paint had so much oxidation on it, even with my business logo stripped off, you can still see it in relief against the rest of the finish, because where the logo was is still shiny. My mechanic, who kept her running all those years used to make the sign of the cross when I brought it in for its twice a year servicing and finally asked me when I was going to get rid of that "D" thing. I sill miss her.

Agnespuffin ~ I think each person has to draw his/her own line. Just because I hear and understand various slangs doesn't mean my speech must incorporate their usage.

A long time ago, an acquaintence questioned why I never said f-* or s-*; I explained that a) using them excessively invalidated their effectness and b) if someone remembered something I said, I didn't want it littered with those words. Besides, those words really aren't very descriptive -- if I'm going to swear at or about something, I prefer to be very, very exact. Which probably gets us to definitions. I may understand the usage of saying something like "a pimp car", but I won't use it myself because to me, pimp is not an adjective nor is it an admirable or desirable noun.

Well POS literally meant that back the day when I was hearing it (mid 80s), not just a car which lacked "pimping", hot rodding, or just plain customizing. Pimp My Ride is an ok show, I promise; my husband made me watch this more than once. It's clean fun where they do obscure, over the top, but interesting cars. One was a girl who loved to look good. They hooked her up with a car whose trunk lifted up and had a huge mirror in it, and a compartment filled with nooks and crannies that helped her look good. Silly, but fun. Another was a guy who didn't have luck with the babes and they made his into a sort of lounge vehicle, complete with pop up rose. I like that it's clean, but still nice.

Here is a link that might be useful: Pimp my ride

I've seen Pimp my truck a couple of times, and it's a feel good show and I agree with you that it is good, clean fun. I just cringe, however, to hear children use the term "pimp" something to describe sprucing it up. We are forced to use politically correct words so much anymore, to the point of being silly..........because it's general consensus that words themselves, regardless of intent, are powerful subliminal influencing agents. Given that, we've given our children permission to give a word like pimp a glorified definition.

I'm not the word police, and I don't/won't go ballistic if I hear anyone use it in this manner. It's just that I see so many words with really demeaning definitions go mainstream and glorified and moved out of the realm of adult-speak.

Um, Trick My Truck is on the Country Music Television channel and Pimp My Ride is on MTv, Music Television, very very different shows. But, nonetheless, both are warm hearted and meant to help the down and out.

Here is a link that might be useful: Trick My Truck

You can correct me on that, and that's fine, because I don't watch television, except on the rare occasion simply because it's mostly crap anymore. It doesn't make any difference "which" show uses the Pimp expression anyway, does it?

I agreed that they are fun shows, and both help people and that's also heart-warming. My only point for even opening my mouth is that it's a pity that a term describing a man who subjegates women/children/other men and profits from it is now considered a complimentary title.

I lost track in your penultimate post, Suzy. Do you think "pimp" is considered a "politically correct" word? And who talks about politically correct anymore? No one I know.

Of course not, Sheila. It's supposed to be derogatory. Sorry for making penultimate posts, but Robin's likewise penultimate post was reaffirming what great shows those were (I didn't say they weren't). It still doesn't change the fact that the title is tasteless, and to use a word like pimp in either the noun, adjective or adverb as a desirable thing to be makes me want to go crawl back under the rock where I live (by choice)

This is great! I not only learned what POS stands for, but I learned a new word. Penultimate. Thanks Sheila

hmmm... I suppose it's a step in the right direction if we are so subliminally aware of politically correct terms that we aren't even aware of them being politically correct.

Nonetheless, I think Suzi spoke for me. An attempt to re-define and compel a public acceptance (via the name of public-media show) of a derogatory term just doesn't make it taste better to me. Move over, Suzi, I'm joining you under that rock.

Interesting thread Aggie. After reading this I started thinking of other words which have been repugnant to me in the past and now have now are used in other contexts. Two immediately come to mind...whore and piss. I'm sure there are others too.

This reminds me of a list my friends in college made of the words we hated the most. When we really, really got mad, we'd rattle them all off together. 40 years later I can still remember them all, and now only one of them is still taboo for general consumption.

When I was in high school 10 yr. old and older cars were easily available for minor amounts. I had 5 cars and 3 motorcycles that I paid $10 to $300 for, all in poor shape or needing repairs to get on the road. Commonly called beaters but still transportation and gas at the time was $.17 a gallon. Wish I still had some of them now as they would be worth fixing up and be classic cars worth much more than some of the new ones.

There is and has been a lot of slang associated with cars over the years and cars have defined a lot of our lives in ways we sometimes don't realize. There are many old models that had great ideas behind them that have been lost to poor business practices and other problems. Now it looks like the last big three are near the end and will have to change or just be a part of history.

Don, our first car was a 1942 Chrysler Windsor. It was supposed to be one of the first cars with automatic transmission. We got it for 200 bucks when we were first married. Oh, it was a lovely car for driving around. We felt like royalty. We kept it for a few years and that transmission finally gave out. We sold it for 200 bucks. So I guess you could say we got it for free.

Here's how young I am... I thought you said $17 per gallon Don. It made more sense. It was $0.68 when I first drove.

Suzanne...where areeeeeeeeeeee you??

My mother used to spend one dollar for gas once a week. That got her five gallons and was enough to get me to school and her to work. I have often wondered what kind of mileage we used to get on those old cars. Hers was a 1934 Pymouth.

Marda - I was out driving my 9-yr. old POS Pontiac. That's where I was!

There was once a collection of stories online that people had submitted about the POS vehicles. It was one of the funniest things I'd ever read.

My own children refuse to believe that at one point in time cars did not come with heaters. I drove a 1974 Volkswagen Superbeetle and anyone who drove an original Beetle knew that the heater only worked when the car was actually moving. I had my handy ice scraper sitting in the passenger's seat and every time I stopped at a stop light I had to scrape the INSIDE of the windows. It was either that or quit breathing.

A friend of mine had a cheesy vehicle (an ancient Ford Pinto I believe) break clean in half when he drove over a rough railroad crossing!

I'd love to hear your funniest car stories.

Hey Suzanne! It must have been the car talk that lured you back here.

I could go on & on about POS cars. The VW with "heating" was a wonderful thing to behold. Even better when it was a VW van - remember those? The "heater" would get the driver & passenger warm - well eventually anyway, but back in the back of the van it just remained frigid.

However, the best POS car was my mom's 1964 Chevy Malibu. It had power nothing & drove like a tank. I learned how to drive on it as did my brother. We called it "The Bear" because that's what it was like to drive it. However, it did have one redeeming feature - it always started no matter how cold the weather got in Chicago. In the infamous winter of 1978 - 1979 my parent's other two cars gave up the ghost in the cold, cold weather, but The Bear started every morning with hardly a sputter. Now it did have some rust problems. In fact a hole had rusted through the back seat floor board & my dad had put the bottom of a broken snow shovel over the hole. Finally in April when things had started to melt, he was driving down the street & heard a load BANG. The floorboard had rusted through around the snow shovel & the darn thing had fallen out onto the street!

Dad then decided that it was time for The Bear to go. However, it didn't go to the junkyard. He sold it to some 16-year-old greaser for $100 & that kid drove it around town for another 4 or 5 years!

When DH was in grad school in Iowa,and I was teaching 25 miles away out in the country,I was on my way to school in a really bad snow storm in my Beetle..little yellow convertible Beetle. Now you have to understand,Iowans are not wusses about the snow and school closings then rarely happened. Anyway..the storm turned into a blizzard and driving past nothing but snow covered cornfields to the horizon on a snow covered road,well..I lost all perspective. I fnally made it,after stopping a gazillion times and scraping the ice off the inside windows,and when I got there the parking lot was empty. I th ink I invented some swear words that day,or at least a wonderful string of them together never used before. I marched into the school,called home and sure enough DH was there because Iowa State had cancelled classes. I told him either he came and got me or he was home all day alone with kid because I wasn't budging. He and a bunch of his friends came and got me and the little bug stayed there for a couple of days. I won't talk about the Camero flipping over from the black ice,again on the way to that school and rolling into the ditch...and me going no more than about 20 miles an hour. Today..one snow flake and I go nowhere.

Marda, funny how as we get older we become weather weenies, isn't it? I used to plow through just about everywhere in winter weather, although to be honest, if I didn't living in Chicago, I would have been housebound about 6 months out of the year.

I did own a For Pinto that many referred to as the "death car." It had a notoriously unstable rear end & was prone to fish-tailing when the roads got slick. I threw 100 lbs of kitty litter in the back of the hatch & just kept on trucking.

These days, I'm like you. However, I also tend to stay at home before the weather gets bad. A forecast of bad weather can keep me inside these days.