Is that something dirty???

Last we in class, we took a survey on language trends in the New Hampshire and Vermont area. One of the questions asked something about what I call soft ice cream (as in not the hard stuff that you scoop out, but the creamy stuff that comes out of the machine). Some of the answers were soft serve, soft ice cream, and things like that. The one that I picked (because that's what I call this kind of ice cream) was creemee.

I have known what a creemee is all my life. I spent my early childhood (from birth to about age six) in Vermont and my family would always go out for creemees during the summer. But apparently, no one from around here knows what a creemee is. I found this out a few summers ago. I was working outside with a bunch of other kids from my youth group. We had been working all day long, outside in the hot sun, and a few of us started saying things that would be just perfect right now. I said that I could really go for a creemee right now. And everyone just stared at me like I was crazy or something. It took me a few minutes to figure out why they were so confused, because in my mind, I hadn't said anything worthy of such shock and confusion. Once we figured out what the difference was, I was shocked that my friends from New Hampshire had no idea what a creemee was. Granted I hadn't lived in New Hampshire my whole life, but Vermont is in the same part of the country. I mean, the states are right next to each other. I would think that something as common as soft serve ice cream would have the same name. The rest of that summer, I asked all of my friends if they knew what a creemee was. The most common and most comical response I got was "is that something dirty?" It took me a while to figure out that creemee must just be a Vermont word. Now, all of my friends know what a creemee is, but if I go to an ice cream stand and ask for a small vanilla creemee, all I receive is a very confused look from the person taking my order.