"We're off like a herd of turtles!" I exclaimed to my two buds in the car.
They stopped in mid-seat-buckle and exchanged a glance. "Say
what?!"And I realized I'd done it. A full-blown, full-fledged Mom-ism-- one of those bizarre things my mother would habitually say to
me under the very same circumstances.
And hearing it come out of my own mouth... well, the terror was palpable.
Which got me thinking about all the other things my parents would say
every time a certain occasion would come up. Some parental knee-jerk answer to communicating.
And how these quips and quotes and half-proverbs are now ingrained in
my brain, ready at a moment's notice to leap out of the shadows and from behind Life's shrubberies like some trench-coated pervert...
Unexpected... unwanted... unwarranted... and
unfortunately, wholly void of pants.Like, say, someone tells you their hand or nose itches. That is the perfect moment to proclaim, "Come into money, or kiss a fool!"
Now, I can't recall ever
receiving the big bucks, or getting smooched up by, say, Pauly Shore following an itchy palm or an allergy attack. But the phrase sure lingers.
Okay, here's another one. Say someone tells you they've had to do a lot of different, unrelated jobs at work during the week. Do you ask how it's going? Do you offer helpful hints from your own career experiences? Do you listen to their tale with a sympathetic ear?
NO! You say, "Ah! Chief cook and bottlewasher!"
Let me tell you, that pretty much puts an end to any added discussion right away.
Next-- say your friend sitting across from you in a crowded coffeeshop mentions they think they're being stared at. The appropriate response here? "Always lookin' at ya, never stops!"
WHAT this phrase was even from-- a TV commercial? An episode of "Laugh-In"? A film?-- appears to be lost to time. (Or really, really buried in Google.) But it has become another Mom-ism of Mystery.
My father, on the other hand, leans more toward the creative license with words and music. If you fill up your car's gas/petrol tank, you are filling it with "gasolino." If you have allergies? The little pill that you take? That's an "antihistamino"...
Why these words have become either faux Spanish or Italian, when the Pop's side of the family is peopled with Swedes, I simply cannot say.
But this charming trait now haunts the next generation.
Lastly, I'd mentioned how the Pop likes to make merry with the music, changing the lyrics to some well-known songs to give them that special, added zing. (Read: embarrasses the hell out of you when you're a teenager.)
The real problem with this is, I've heard these songs incorrectly since I was a child, with no idea that my father-- the authority figure who I was supposed to trust to guide me in the important things in life like good decision-making and, y'know, song lyrics--
all this time has been taking liberties with lines of Gershwin. So things like the classic tune "Summertime" have become:
"Summertime, and the living is easy
Fish are jumping
And the cattle are high."
Perhaps Porgy and Bess found a more lucrative crop than cotton. No other explanation, really.
So I'm curious, folks-- is it just
my incredibly strange family, or as an adult have
you found yourself spewing out the little catch phrases, Fortune cookie wisdom and other mumbo-jumbo passed down to you courtesy of your parents?
Well, gotta go-- Time waits for no marmot!
(Okay, that's not really a Momism, I made that one up. But, who knows? Maybe it'll catch on.)
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