Silly Sayings

I can sense the warmth and feel the love when I hear parents admonishing their children to “sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.”  (Of course, that was before the scary bedbug epidemic, the foul creatures spreading from ratty hotels in New York to flourish in less ratty hotels, then apartments, then movie theaters and airplanes and possibly your children’s beds.  Which makes the saying somewhat less adorable. But I digress.)

"Sleep Tight..."

Our families had sayings too, but unlike the aforementioned bedbug alert, they seemed to make no sense at all.  For example, my husband’s mother was staunchly opposed to foul language (she could watch a ship full of pirates hack each other into hors D'oeuvres but as soon as they damned someone to hell the TV was turned off.)  When she burned herself in the kitchen, stubbed her toe or became displeased with one of her four boys she would proclaim “YOUR FATHER’S MUSTACHE” instead of swearing. Also an oddity, whenever someone in their family uttered “So?” in conversation, their attempt to ask a question was squashed thusly:  “Sew buttons on a milk bottle.” Go ahead-use that any time you want to avoid a topic at the dinner table. My husband still doesn’t bother speaking most of the time.

My Mother was an immigrant from Hungary.  She would sit with my children and chant this ditty from her own childhood:

“Ver’s your money?

In my pocket

Ver’s your pocket?

In my pants

Ver’s your pants?

I leff dem home

Get out of here you dirty bum!”

This ditty makes me wonder if when in Hungary one should overlook minor cultural differences like no pants or exposing one’s self to children.  My Mother also had a habit of combining American colloquialisms.  Many times she soothed me by saying that “It is just milk going under da bridges.”  Oddly enough it is the saying I disliked the most that I return to again and again as I worry about my daughter living away at college, my younger going to high school and my husband working his own business.  “It’s a jungle out der.”

Thinking about these old sayings leads me to ponder some of our own family's responses to our girl's behaviors. In retrospect they seem less whimsical, and well, meaner. The one that was invoked most often is: “Don’t do that at prom,” and it addresses everything from bad table manners to picking wedgies out of butts.  I would work on being nicer but, after all “it is a jungle out der.”

My daughter at prom...having avoided bad manners and butt picking as far as I know...

So (buttons on a milk bottle) what sayings have stuck in your family?