Old Time Talking

Whenever my grandmother had to re-do something she’d just done she would say, “I guess I have to lick my calf over.” I can’t imagine why anyone would lick a calf in the first place or how that expression came into existence, but I’m sure there’s an explanation out there somewhere. I suppose today we would call it a  “do over” but that just isn’t as descriptive, is it?

Or how about this: “A whistling girl and a crowing hen always come to some bad end.” Why is whistling bad and why would a hen crow?

Did you know that if a woman marries and doesn’t change her name she is doomed to die of a bellyache? At least that’s what my grandmother said, and when it comes to dispensing advice she had a unique perspective.

When we watched television together I would sneak a peek at her during the commercials. When something she didn’t understand was advertised she would squint her eyes, peer over the top of her glasses, and scratch her head. “What in the Sam hill are they advertising?” she would ask.

Sometimes I knew, sometimes I didn’t. But then again, I never knew who Sam was and how his hill was connected to anything either.

Or where did the expressions “Dad gum it” or “Dad blame it” come from? What did poor old Dad do that was so wrong?

One day I walked into the kitchen and caught Grandma staring at the television muttering, “Dot com, dot com, what in the world is a dot com?”

Technology talk is for the modern world and Grandma’s lingo came from the past.

Members of her generation most likely know words like “drekly” (directly), “reckon,” and “recollect.” They know that if someone says “I’ll be there in two shakes of a sheep’s tail,” they won’t have long to wait, and they understand what it means when “the pot calls the kettle black.”

But when my children hear their great-grandmother speak her old-time talk they were as puzzled as she was about the dot com.

I may never know why someone had to lick their calf over, and I may never find Sam’s hill, but the thoughts and beliefs of my parents and grandparents live on through me. The familiar phrases they used comfort and guide me.

“You reap what you sow,” Grandma said. So watch what you say. You never know when someone might be listening.

“Sow a thought; reap an action.
Sow an action; reap a habit.
Sow a habit; reap a character.
Sow a character; reap a destiny.”