When you were a child, did the adults around you have any phrases you considered ridiculous?
Asked by
longgone (
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September 25th, 2022
Do you still feel the same way?
My example is “The world isn’t fair!” in response to my complaints about injustice. I hope I never say that to a child. I didn’t have the words to argue at the time, but I always felt deeply frustrated. I knew the world isn’t fair. I had just experienced it! I was trying to fix it in a small way, which is all anyone can do.
Furthermore, the adults in my life certainly insisted on fairness at other times. I wonder what they had said if, in response to being told to share for the sake of fairness, I had simply said “The world isn’t fair!”
Do you remember situations like that?
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30 Answers
Children are to be seen not heard!!!
“Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about” wasn’t said in my family but it was in my Ex’s.
As us kids were fighting in the backseat of the car my dad would say “don’t make me come back there”. I always had an image of my dad crawling over the seat as the car was still moving. It didn’t scare us, it made us giggle.
And @janbb, my dad said that, too. It made no sense.
@janbb
My late Mother used to say that to us alot, thus we felt punished for crying and had to put on a brave face.
@chyna There’s actually a scene in The Simpsons where Homer does just that, and the car starts veering off the road, but Lisa quickly grabs the wheel. :P
“If at first you don’t succeed, keep on a suckin’ till you do suck a seed!” I knew it was a silly Southern phrase that my Dad’s mom used to say, but it’s all I have for this Q. I’ll keep thinking tho.
Other people’s parents, saying “don’t talk back” or telling kids not to “be smart” or “act smart” (again meaning not to say anything contradictory to the parents, even though the parents were typically being unreasonable or foolish or unclear or were out of control).
My dad and grandfather, used to say 18 for 118 ave or street. One of these days they will do it to a 911 operator and get someone killed.
Better than a kick in the ass with a frozen boot.
Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
You are not as stupid as you look.
“I’ll go to the foot of my stairs.”
An expression of shock/surprise.
In Trig. My math teacher claimed that there was an opposite adjacent angle. What was it I said there can’t be both? Messed me up for two years.
When I would try to explain something in all honesty to my father, he would say, “Don’t lie!” Then he would ask the question again. When I couldn’t answer he’d yell “Tell me!” Then the whole process would start over. For 2 hours this could go on!!
Oh, I remember another: Our middle school PE teachers used to frequently threaten us that we might “get a zero for the day!” from them. For example, one time I was just waiting for them to tell us what to do, and one of them told me “You don’t look like you’re happy to be here!” and when I admitted it, they told me to leave and that I’d get a zero for the day! And to tell the head of the middle school! So I did. The head of the middle school laughed! Everyone knew that PE didn’t give grades, so their ranking system had no effect on anything. Except maybe the PE teachers didn’t realize that, somehow.
I was told that I was more useless than tits on a boar frequently by family. Not by mom. She rocks!
My dad used to have a saying, “That’s the way the ball bounces”, or, “That’s the way the cookie crumbles”. A variation I suppose of our modern “Shit Happens”. And he would usually apply it in that kind of sense. Like if I came home from a track meet or something and told him our school didn’t perform very well, he’d tell me ’‘I’m sorry to hear that, but that the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.” Or, “That’s the way the ball bounces now and then.”
Dead as a door nail. I thought that was nutty. I must admit that I actually heard it used in the series called “The Crown.” So, I guess it came to us from England, like so so many things.
That makes me wonder Snip…when a British person pronounces a word so differently than we do, does that mean we’re pronouncing it wrong? Like David Attenborough pronounces “Glacier” like “Glass e er.”
@Dutchess_III Well it sounds wrong to them, and some of them would say yes, and some of those might not be kidding. After a year living there, I was still making some of them chuckle with my accent. But even within the USA, there are regional dialects. You’re not really doing it “wrong” unless you’re doing it like no one else.
Some people pronounce words in ways that tend to reveal that their idea of how the word is spelled, is wrong. That (pronunciation based on misspelling) might be considered definitively wrong. (And that does seem to me overall much more common in the US, than in Britain. Though Britain also has some semi-literates, and it has tons of regional dialects, some of which are nearly incomprehensible to many Americans.)
@Dutchess_III But a lot of words that Brits pronounce differently from Americans sound wrong to us, like al you-uMIN-i-um for aluminum and Shedule for schedule. It’s a lot of fun to note the differences. And as @Zaku says, just like in the States, there are many different regional accents and dialects.
^@janbb has a funny accent. Just sayin…
@chyna You mean just because I’m from Joisey? Fuggedaboutit!
^She sounds good to me. Like mishpocha! Shanah Tovah!
You can be anything you want if you just try hard enough.
One very common one was “because I’m older than you”.
I can understand why that explanation may be necessary to justify authority, but it’s used well beyond the age where you could argue that.
I’m halfway through life and still people use it without saying it though. I recently encountered a man who was twice my age but very simple minded and uneducated and plain wrong in many many things. Sometimes he would say things that weren’t just incorrect, I mean they were wrong on every level. Criminal even.
The problem with me is I feel I’m doing the person a good service and my duty by correcting them at least on important matters. Such as not promoting or inciting ethnic violence. Or Destruction of property. Underage sex. You know, bad stuff. And also obvious small stuff like things that might ruin supper.
A friend of his one day had to have a talk with me explaining how I was getting to this guy and how it’s not about being right and wrong, it’s about the fact that he is older and I’m younger.
Today he is my mortal enemy. I could write a book on the number of things he did to make my life hard and sabotage me. I had to get physical with him at one point which is the furthest thing from my character but it was necessary.
I have more stories about interacting with people older than me at the time.
Maybe I have a disobedience problem. But I could very well argue that maybe that’s what the world needs, is disobedience.
No. That is NOT what this world needs. Especially not this world.
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