Hope Darby Writings

Growing up in a Southern family is pretty much a guarantee of growing up with odd sayings. Hailing from Alabama, as I do, doubles that guarantee and adds a side of grits. I’ve been a smart-aleck, sass-mouth and too big for my britches, more times than I can count, beginning from the time I was knee high to a fire ant. For you non-Southerners, that all translates to, “I had a smart mouth even as a small child.”

You have to admit, the Southern-style is much more entertaining.

My grandmother was a fount of quirky sayings (or “Mamaw-isms” as I call them), that she inherited from her parents. If a baby was crying in obvious teething agony, she would coo, “Just cuttin’ through like a hen grindin’ plates, aren’t they?” I eventually learned that this alluded to her childhood chore of tossing broken dishware to the chickens, who would use the shattered ceramic to sharpen their beaks.

In times of real anger, an offender would be threatened with having their own heads “shoved where the sun don’t shine,” or to be “knocked back to last Tuesday and smacked again on Wednesday.” Even now, I catch myself growling those gems when particularly frustrated with someone.

There is one tradition that typically abounds in all Southern families: gossip. We like to sit outside, preferably on the front porch, and chatter about the goings-on of family members, neighbors and various other people in our lives. Just as some people use the phrase “With all due respect,” as being a Get Out of Jail Free card if used before saying something scathing, my family has their own little catchphrase: “Now, I’d rather step on my own tongue than to say something bad about anyone, but…”

And it works. So long as you preface a snarky comment with a declaration that involves trotting over your own tongue, no one will consider anything you say the slightest bit awry. It’s great, you really should give it a try.

There are dozens of other -isms that have passed through my family and made it into our common vernacular. Some friends, though Southern themselves, have given me the funniest looks when I’ve declared myself to be feeling “plumb tuckered” at the end of a long day, or when I describe the weather as being “a little nippy.” There are others, however, that they have heard – and used – themselves. For example, a trashy woman typically looks as if “she’s been rode hard and put up wet,” while a tacky man is “one of those tires-on-the-front-yard kinda guys.”

So whether we’re on the front-porch swangin’ or iced-tea idlin’, my Southern family can entertain you without even trying. And you can bet your ever-lovin’ tushes on that.