ToMAYto, TOMato

Over the years, my cousin Scott and I spent so much time together that we developed a fun rivalry. This has resulted in all sorts of entertainingly petty arguments, such as the time that I adamantly insisted that Darth Vader’s breathing made a sound like “ho...hee”, with Scott much more accurately asserting that it went “ho…ber”. Another example of our playful pettiness is our love for certain characters in an old Sega Genesis game called Streets of Rage 2. I always maintained that a guy named Axel was the best, citing evidence such as the fact that Axel’s power, technique, and stamina ratings all were higher than those of his favorite character, Skate. 

We would call each other on the phone, quickly lay out our argument before quipping, “Proved you wrong!” and swiftly hanging up the phone. Our rivalry runs so deep that I even named my blog “Axel’s Better than Skate” so that he would have to read that every time he visited. One year, I even made a video that I put up on YouTube that showed how the Declaration of Independence proves that he is wrong:

Today, I was driving in my car thinking about all the different pronunciations of “Omicron” that I hear (“OH-muh-cron” / “oh-MY-cron” / “AH-muh-cron” / “uh-MY-cron” / etc.), when I was reminded of another one of our spats. Early in the 1990s, Scott’s family had a set of toys called “Omagles” that were made up of a bunch of colorful plastic tubes and connectors that you could use to build structures and vehicles that you could climb on or ride around. One day, I casually referred to them by name, calling them “OM-a-guls”, much to Scott’s delight. “OM-a-guls?” he laughed. “It’s ‘oh-MAY-guls’, like ‘omega’.” To settle the score, we asked his mom, who let us know that the correct pronunciation was, indeed, “oh-MAY-guls”. How was I supposed to know? I was just a kid, and it’s not like we could just google it or something. And hey, in my defense, it seemed like a plausible pronunciation.

Oh well—you win some, you lose some.

Over the years, Scott and I have shared a lot of laughs as we reminisce about our silly arguments, with my sheepish recollections of “Ho…hee” and “OM-a-guls” providing the most chuckles. And over the years, we’ve learned to laugh at ourselves when we’re wrong and be better at letting things go when we think we’re right.

After I got home from my drive, I figured it would be fun to poke fun at myself and send Scott a picture or video of Omagles, if any such evidence existed on the internet. I searched YouTube, and much to my delight, I found a video:

OM-a-guls. You have got to be kidding me. I TAKE IT ALL BACK: Proved you wrong!