Thursday, September 13, 2018

Dad sayings

Long before Captain Hawkeye Pierce said something similar on M*A*S*H, my dad used to say, 'Listen my children, take my advice, pull down your pants and slide on the ice'.

I never did that, but -- ever the daredevil -- I find that I am beginning to favour British spelling and punctuation in my old age (77). You know what they say, there's no fool like an old fool, and I am just trying to keep up my end of the bargain.

I'm feeling silly today. Did you notice?

Laughter is good for the soul.

With a dad like mine, is it any wonder I turned out the way I did?

He also said, 'Pull my finger’, but I won't go in that direction today.

What did your dad used to say?

21 comments:

  1. You have made me think Bob. Not something I am used to. My father died in 1979. He used to say, "Hurry up Neil or you'll miss the bus!"

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    1. Neil, think some more because another post is coming.

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  2. My father used to say "Pull up the floor and sit on your thumb." I still don't know what that means.

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    1. Emma, I don't either but it appeals to my prurient interest.

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  3. 'Still wet between the ears'. 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions'. And, to his daughter who had trouble with distinguishing left and right - 'Your right hand is the one with the thumb on the left'.

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    1. Sue, at our house the version was 'Not dry behind the ears' and it was my mother who sounded like Bartlett's Familiar Quotations all the time. Dad's sayings would never have made it into Bartlett's.

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  4. I'm thinking too... Hmmm. My Dad didn't have many sayings. Instead we used to talk and talk and talk. And still do. About everything, real imagined or even only slightly possible.
    Mum was the one for sayings. She used to muddle them, as in 'She went for it like a bullet at a gate'. She laughed a lot. To this day I don't know if she muddled them on purpose to make people smile.

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    1. Kate, it sounds like you have had a good relationship with both of your parents, and that is a good thing.

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    2. Hmmm, yes, I suppose. I don't complain. However with Dad it was an intellectual relationship, rather than a warm one. And with Mum, she always seemed too busy working to be really loving, to be honest. I think, ironically, she found me too INTELLECTUAL ha ha.

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    3. Kate, not complaining will take you a long way down the road of being thought wise and wonderful. I really can't say about intellectual, although a neighbor once said about me to my mother, "All he knows is book learnin'...."

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  5. I am the only child of a single mother, unusual in my day. I never met my father. My maternal grandfather was a wonderful man, but quiet. My grandmother, on the other hand, used to say all manner of mixed up things - like; "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride; if turnips were watches, I'd wear one on my ankle." It had no affect upon me, and I am completely sane.

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    1. Pam, it's always good to hear from you even though I continue to look in vain for a new post. We have something in common; I am the only child of a single mother as well and never met my father. I had a stepfather I sometimes wish I had never met, and at other times I am grateful for his influece although I didn't appreciate his methods.

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  6. Like Kate, my mum uses sayings more than dad does.
    Dad always credits his own father when he uses "God is no man's debtor" or "sleep on it"

    He also has a range of really bad dad jokes

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    1. kylie, as I told Sue, my mother often sounded like Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. My dad never did.

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  7. A comment on this post arrived in my email from Kate in New Zealand. I thought I published it, but instead it disappeared, thanks to Blogger going kablooey, or email, or something. I did copy it, however, so here it is under my name instead of hers:

    Kate has left a new comment on your post "Dad sayings":

    Oh that's a pity. I know I am lucky having him older and more mellow and (almost) more as a friend now. (He still worries about my finances.) Mum died too young (66) for me to really know her as a person except retrospectively.

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    1. Kate, my mother died at age 47 when I was 16, but what I know of her I loved. My dad (not bio, but that's another story) died ten years later at the age of 60. When I know of him I still have mixed emotions about. (I know, never end a sentence with a preposition.)

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    2. I picked up on that about your 'other' dad, from what his sayings were about ...

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  8. My Dad's principal saying that I remember was "Never hate anything."

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    1. Graham, that is one of the best ones I have heard, although what about hating evil?

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  9. Dad was never the one with the sayings, still isn't, much like Kate it's my mum who comes out with them and always has, my favourite one was 'Always wash your hands in the morning as you never know where they've been in the night'. Hahahaha. Wise words when you think about it.

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    1. Starshine Whatever, my mother was always saying things like, 'Faint heart ne'er won fair maid' and 'A soft answer turneth away wrath' and 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions' and 'A stitch in time saves nine' and 'Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds' and 'Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back' and I could go on and on and on and on....

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<b>Always true to you, darlin’, in my fashion</b>

We are bombarded daily by abbreviations in everyday life, abbreviations that are never explained, only assumed to be understood by everyone...