The Turn of a Phrase

More and more, it seems that archaic phrases are creeping into my vocabulary. Well, at least they must seem archaic to anyone not in my generation. But the generations ahead of mine used these phrases to good effect. They were communication tricks, and moral lessons, and good indicators of which was the right path. And they were colorful.

For example:
“If you lie down with dogs, you will rise up with fleas”. I think this one is pretty self-explanatory. It was said with a self-righteous sniff, usually after one person had been wronged by another (as expected and predicted), to the person who had been wronged. I am sure it was meant to be comforting.

“Birds of a feather flock together” was another favorite. It often went hand in hand with “Water seeks its own level”, meaning that the people being discussed were no better than they ought to be and probably a whole heck of lot worse.

It was very important when I was growing up to “earn your keep”. My husband and kids hate this phrase, but it’s so ingrained in my psyche that I use it without thinking. “Make yourself useful” is tolerable, but “earn you keep” seems to smack of dependency and servitude, and impending homelessness if you don’t toe the mark. Well, it did when I was a kid, too, and I was never fully confident that my folks weren’t going to sell me to the gypsies at any given moment, so I tried very hard to earn my keep, and they kept me, so there you are. People don’t threaten their children with the gypsies anymore, do they? Are the gypsies gone, do you think, or have they just stopped buying children?

There were special phrases descriptive of being unwell. “I feel like I’ve been rode hard and put up wet” harks back to the day of the horse, I guess. Or “She looks like death nibbling on a cracker.” I just love that one. Wonderful imagery and it makes no sense whatsoever. People were genuinely concerned when the illness was real, but had no patience with “malingerers”. I am sure folks still malinger, but you don’t hear that phrase much anymore.

On a tangent: I am a whistler. I am a damn fine whistler, but it drives people crazy, except Mama, who loves my whistling, and wants a recording of it to listen to when I go to California. I became a whistler in imitation of my Grandma Brooks, who was a virtuoso whistler out of defiance. HER grandma had told her that whistling was a bad habit, and meant the devil was after her soul. Her mama told her the “whistling women and cackling hens always come to very bad ends.” Well, Grandma did not come to a bad end at all and lived a rich, full, and productive life of service, so her defiance seems justified. I whistle just to be near her again, and it has become such a habit I don’t even know I am doing it most of the time. I think every life deserves its own soundtrack, and I am whistling mine. I think of it as “making a joyful noise”.

There used to be phrases in school that they don’t use anymore, and it’s a shame, because they were so very useful. My favorite is “I before E, except after C, or when sounding like “A”, as in neighbor or weigh.” That one is wonderful! Or in housekeeping” “The way to set the table right is forks to the left, all else to the right,” Lousy poem, but good way to remember. Do people even teach their children to set the table properly anymore? Or even make them do it? Do kids have to do chores nowadays?

I know I did. When I was a child of about 8, my mother and grandmother started me off with simple tasks- drying the dishes, dusting the furniture, ironing the hankies. Yes, Virginia, we really did carry handkerchiefs and we really did iron them. I had chores because “idle hands are the devil’s play ground.” Over time, I graduated to doing the dishes and running the vacuum and ironing pillowcases and sheets… stop rolling your eyes, there was life before perma-press. I was taught simple sewing and mending because “A stitch in time saves nine” and mending saves money. To this day, I mend things, so I guess I really am a cultural dinosaur.

I learned to “separate the wheat from the chaff” and to “skim the cream from the milk”. I was expected to “put my best foot forward” and “walk the straight and narrow.” I was told that “the truest steel is tempered by the fire” and that God never “gives us burdens unless we have the strength to bear them.” I never “hid my light under a bushel” and always tried, as my grandmother admonished me, to “lighten the corner where you are.”
I don’t know how well I have succeeded, but if “a workman is worthy of his hire”, I think I have earned my keep. I’m rather proud of myself. I must look like the cat that ate the canary.