 |
|
The following account is the
result of dusting the “file room” in the far recesses of my brain and using some
of the dust in the dustpan. When we were kids, our parents, and other family members used to
say things to us that we never heard anyone else say. For example, our Uncle
Ned would say to us, “Get out of the road” (his way. He’d pretend to stab us and say, “Got you
right in the gizzard”. Other times he’d get upset with us and say, “I’m
going to hit you right in the jib”. If he were apologizing to us about
threatening to hit us right in the jib or something, he would say, “Sorry I
barked at you”. THAT was quite an occasion for us kids that an adult actually apologized to US since
usually we were always apologizing to THEM! If we said we were going to do some
dangerous or outrageous thing, Uncle Ned would say, “You better hadn’t”.
When he was going somewhere (usually to TEACO to guzzle Dark Port wine) and we
would ask him, “Hey Ned, where are you going?”, he would say, “Chicago!” Our mother provided a “target rich environment” of sayings. When
we repeatedly asked her for money, every time she would say, “What do you
think I am, made of money!” An alternate thing she said was, “What do
you think I am, the U.S. mint?” or
“Dole out dole out dole out!” When it came to me on
ANY occasion, she would mutter with a crying tone, “That kid”! On these same occasions, she
would also say to me, “You psychopath!!!” Now THAT turned out to be
prophetic. Whenever Tim or I would act arrogant, she would say, “Don’t
get cocky”! On other occasions when we were “acting up”, she would say, “You
kids are going to give me a nervous breakdown!” I imagine we DID! I think
that’s the main reason she and my father drank so much. If we didn’t do
something she asked us to right away, she would say, “Don’t dawdle!” or, “Dawdle
dawdle dawdle”. When we would
come in to eat, she would tell us, “Your ears are so dirty you could grow
potatoes”! Well, I always figured that at least we could have potatoes for
every meal. When we were all fighting, she would yell, “Pick and fight!” repeatedly. She used to yell at me and said, “You’re
enough to drive a preacher to drink”! I don’t know about that, but I sure
drove HER to drink! When Tim or I would go outside on cold days without wearing
coats, she would threaten us and say, I’m
going to tell Dr. Blackann to sharpen
his needles!” (Which meant a shot of penicillin!) When it was bedtime, and
we were dawdling, she would say, “You march up to bed right now!” That
really came in handy when I was in Navy Basic Training. I was the best marcher in the whole company! On
other occasions, if we didn’t march up to bed right away, she’d say, “If you
don’t go to bed right now, I’ll take you upstairs so fast your head’ll swim!”
I never could figure out how it would make my head “swim” or what it does when
it “swims? Since we ALWAYS broke our toys, she would say, “You satisfied you
broke it!” or, “Why don’t you just take a hammer to it!” or just, “Well, you broke it!” If
we were picking our nose in front of her she’d say, “What are you doing,
drilling for oil?” One time, when I was particularly “cocky”, after she
asks me that, I held a nostril and blew out a bunch of mucous from the other
one and said, “Yeah, and I struck it!” I remember it like it was
yesterday. If she were still alive, it very well could have been yesterday! As
a kid I was addicted to pop (I still am). She would try to hide it from me, but
I always found it and drank most, if not all of it. When she went to get it out
of one of her hiding places and found that most if not all of it was gone, she
would say to me, “Well I see you found it and sucked it all down!” Speaking
of that, Tim and I would often not remove the pop bottle cap and just poke a
hole through it with a knife and suck it through the hole. Those times we
really did “suck it down”! Right after
she yelled at us for “sucking down” all the pop, she would then vow, “My God strike me dead if I ever buy anymore pop!” Well, it’s a good
thing God didn’t take her up on that (She died at age72) since we continued to
“suck down” pop until we “grew up” and left home. Then we could continue to
“suck down” pop (only if our wives weren’t home). When we really aggravated and
took advantage of her, she said, “Someday
you’re not going to have a mother!”
When I was bad, she would threaten to “Call the Children’s Home” to have me
committed. Other times when she saw us
“making a face” she would warn us not to do that because our faces would
“freeze” and stay like that forever! If we got something for a meal we didn’t
like and wouldn’t eat, she’d say, “Eat it
or I’ll jam it down your throat!” When she got upset with Uncle Ned, she
would say to us, “His mind is so addled
with alcohol, he doesn’t know what he’s doing!” She always referred to him
as “alkey” since he drank so much. When he was drunk, which was all the time,
she’d state, “Ned’s in orbit again!” Our Dad had a whole litany of things he would say to us. When he
was trying to watch TV and we were making noise, he’d yell, “HARK”! I
always kept waiting to see if he’d add, “…The
Herald Angels Sing”, since that’s the only other time I ever heard the
word “Hark”. If we said something or he found something, he’d say, “That’s
the McGaffer”. When we acted up,
he’d say”, If you don’t behave I’m going to knock you flatter than a
fritter!” and/or, I’m going to slap you down and/or, I’ll cuff
you” or “I’ll Backhand you”. When he and all his friends would drink, they
always called the liquor “Zookey Juice”. If one of us goofed up, he’d say, “You
logger head!” If we acted up in front of people he’d say, “You made me
look like 2 cents!” (Actually, it was more like MINUS two cents). If he were
alive today, due to inflation, he would have said, “You made me look like 24
dollars and 38 cents”! When he hit us for no apparent reason, we would ask
him why he did it and he would say, “General principles”. He would really get upset at us when we tried
to explain why we did something that upset him. He would say, “Don’t give me
any back talk!” If we were fooling around with something we shouldn’t have,
he would say, “Don’t monkey with that!” Among the more innocuous things he said to us was when we got home from
going somewhere, while still in the car just as we got to our driveway, he’d
say, “Home again home again Rig a dee jig.” When he saw something that
was pleasing or he liked he’d say, “That’s a darb”, or "That’s a
darby”. Our fraternal grandmother “Ollie” had a plethora of sayings and
things she said to us. When it came time to eat she’d yell, “Soups on”.
I never could figure out why she didn’t just say, “It’s time to eat”. I
guess that would be too easy and she NEVER did anything the easy way. When she
wanted something done, she would say, “Do it this instant!” If there was
something she was pleased with (never with us kids), she would say, “Isn’t
that grand.” Whenever we ate in front of her, she’d always say, “Napkin!”
This meant that we “forgot” to put a napkin on our lap. One thing that always
bugged her (and still does me) is the incorrect pronunciation of words.
One of the things that really bothered her was when we called a picture a
“pitcher”. She would always tell us, “its pic ture not pitcher!”
Sometimes when it was too quiet, she would pipe up and say, “Let’s talk
about the death of kings”, or “Thus the pyramids”. We never knew
what she was talking about, but it was interesting as well as puzzling. She was
always saying to us, “Waste not want not”, and “Eat every smidgeon of
it”! If we tried to pick up something we shouldn’t have, she'd say, “Keep
your meat hooks off of that”. When we were wrestling on the floor, she
would say, “Quit “Rough Housing”! One of my favorite sayings was when the
lawn was full of litter or the outside was generally a mess, she would say to
us, “This place looks like Hillbilly Haven”! If we were “acting up”,
she’d say, “I’m going to take a stick to
you!” When I was a kid, I wanted to have black hair. When I always said
this to “Ollie”, she’d always say, “Your
hair is as black as a raven’s wing”. I
used to beat up my sister Sue all the time. When “Ollie” would be around as I
was doing that, she was convinced I’d cause her permanent physical
disabilities. She lamented and said, “Susie
will never have children!” (I’ll bet her 2 sons will get a kick out of
reading that!) When the corn was growing in the late summer, she’d say, “It’s as high as an elephant’s ear.” One
of the things she said to me left a lasting impression. If I didn’t finish my
plate at a meal she would point to the remaining portion and say with a forlorn
voice, “I want to be eaten”. Thus,
she anthropomorphized the inanimate food. That has some how stayed with me all
my life. To this day when I drop food on the floor, after I throw it in the
wastebasket, I always throw another piece in to “keep it company so it won’t
get lonely”! Weird, huh? I have always done this in spite of the fact that I
know, of course, that food doesn’t “have feelings”. However, some trees do,
such as “Weeping” willows”. Many times when she waxed philosophical, she would
say profound things like, “If your initials
spell a word, that means you’ll be rich in later life.” When we came in for
lunch or supper after spending hours on the tractor working the fields, she
would ask us, “What do you think about
out there all day?” Being a teenager at the time, on one occasion I
answered her and said, “Raw SEX!”
(Which was what Tim and I always
thought about! Even at my age, I still
think about S.E.X. (sleep, exlax, X rays). Our maternal grandmother Sommers would say to us if we were planning
to do something we shouldn’t have, “You daresent do that”! I never knew
what “daresent” meant, but she was the only person I ever heard use that word.
I assumed she meant, “Dare not”. She referred to the basement as the cellar.
She said “down cellar” and didn’t ever say “the cellar”. Whenever our fraternal grandfather Raymond, aka, “Gonga” would get upset at us, whenever we’d start playing
with something of his, he’d yell, “Leave that be”, which undoubtedly was
the precursor to Paul McCartney’s “Let it be”. Our Aunt Lou would call cereal “Breakfast Food”. If she were irritated
with us, she’d say, “I’m very cross with you”. Well, these are just a very small few of the saying that I
recall of the things they said to us as kids. There were MANY more, but I can’t
cite them here or I’ll lose my “Safe Surfing” designation. I have one of my own
“timeless tidbits” too. I say to Tim from time to time, “And we wonder why
they drank!” Related stories links: |
 |
 |
 |