The FP

When I was a little kid in Dhaka, I had a friend named Sharon who lived down the road. 

She was British. She spent a lot of time at our house. 

We visited them in London the summer after they moved back to the UK. Sharon's mom told us Sharon got teased by classmates for using American words.

For example, instead of saying biscuits, she said cookies.

We always had cookies at our house. So many cookies.

We must've visited their family on a Sunday, because everyone was home. It was the first time I'd seen a dumbwaiter. We kids took turns hauling each other up and down in their walls.

British school went later into the summer than our school in Dhaka, and her parents wouldn't let her take the Monday off for us to hang out. I remember sobbing, absolutely sobbing, and it was clear her parents thought my manners were appalling.

Now, as an adult and a mom, looking back at this shameful memory, I think I was seven, maybe eight years old. I imagine we were still jet lagged and us kids were overtired and probably had been eating tons of sugar, and it's hardly surprising I melted down.

This is nice to write out, so I can let go of  that cringey memory.

Anyway, by the time I met Fiona last summer, I knew of some important differences beyond biscuit and cookie in our varieties of English.

So.

One of India's friends gave her a fanny pack for her birthday a couple years ago.

Prior to this, I was unaware of the Return of the Fanny Pack. They've come back with a vengeance.

India's is pale pink, from Lululemon, and honestly, it's kind of perfect. 

I started using it on errands, and last summer India very generously said I could take it on my travels. It was amazing from the start, holding my passport and my boarding pass, phone, lip balm, phone charger, and hydration packets or a little snack.

I'm telling you.

I wore it throughout my time in Bali.

I became a fanny pack enthusiast. Or re-became. Or re-enthusiast, perhaps, since I'd embraced them wholeheartedly in the 90s.

I'd forgotten how incredibly useful they are. I asked for one for my birthday last year, knowing India wanted hers back.

Much like my love of all things neon in the 80s, I had multiple fanny packs in the 90s. I even had a textile one and a leather one that my mom bought me in Ecuador.

Anyway.

So in my mid-20s I spent six months traveling in India and Nepal. I had two backpacks (one parked at the house of friends) and my fanny pack.

What I didn't know then was that "fanny" in British English has a very different meaning than "fanny" in American English.

Growing up, we used the word butt or bottom, but my grandmother used to use the word fanny. 

(She also used the words homely and davenport.)

So I'd been backpacking for months, meeting a variety of fellow travelers, many of whom were from the UK. Sometimes we'd be in the same hostel overnight, or sometimes our agendas coincided and we'd travel together for days or weeks.

My new American friends and I wound up walking most of the Everest trek with two British guys.

We sometimes had private rooms, but were most often sleeping in dormitories, and as such, I kept important stuff in my very convenient fanny pack. I didn't always wear it, but it was always handy.

I imagine I mentioned my fanny pack at least a couple of times over my travels, with nobody saying anything. 

Until one day I think one of the guys asked me to hold something—a document or passport or some such—and I said something along the lines of, "Sure—I'll just stick it in my fanny pack."

Which was met with stunned silence.

Because fanny! Fanny in British English is slang for vulva.

I'm not sure how vulgar it is. Like, I don't think it's tantamount to saying c*nt.

I think it's more like lady bits? But stronger?

So maybe "fanny pack" is more like "beaver bag" or "cooter pouch"?

In any case, surprising, if you're telling someone you're just going to pop their trekking permit into your VAGINAL CONTAINER for safekeeping.

Yes.

Was I mortified?

Yes. 

But not enough to not find it hilarious.

Anyway, when I met Fiona and she complimented my fanny pack—although not by that name—I told her that I was well aware that we called this particular container of convenience by different names in our respective countries.

I knew, I said, that Brits call it a "bum bag" rather than a (and here I whispered, like I might be talking about prison) "fanny pack".

I explained how I learned this.

Since I hadn't thought about the bag or the term in years, I hadn't shifted my nomenclature. Fanny pack it was.

Except that now it sounded kind of naughty.

Even better.

And then Fiona went home and she asked for one for her birthday. Because they are ridiculously convenient.

Much like Sharon and the cookies, but with the awareness that comes with adulthood, Fiona calls hers an FP. So now I call mine an FP.

I got an ad for a fleecy one before Christmas, and I sent her the link. Maybe she needed a furry FP to keep her warm in the cold English winter? 

She's got a regular one. We discovered when we met that we have practically the same bag. Turns out our respective daughters were incredibly excited to buy them for us.

Lululemon, however, avoids the fraught term. They call it an "everywhere belt bag"—which seems a safe approach to me. You don't have the dorky visual baggage of the 90s and you avoid shocking a swath of the English-speaking globe.

Whereas me, I'm not trying to sell anything. And I'm fine with 90s dorkiness and with horrifying the occasional human.

Sometimes, Sharon, that's just the way the biscuit crumbles.