things your mom said forever

does it have to be that loud?

"God bless America" as a curse

a bored person is a boring person

you can't be that hungry if you won't eat an apple

a place for everything, an everything in its place

near enough is not good enough

I wish I'd never had children.

you must get that from your father

Is that a want or a need?

I don't have to like you, I just have to love you.

This is why we can't have anything nice.

She liked certain little snippets of poems:

"Life is real, life is earnest, and the grave is not its goal."
"Malt does more than Milton can to justify god's ways to man."
"The best laid plans o' mice and men gang aft aglay."

Invariable curse: god damn it to hell!

Home, James and don't spare the horses!

^^^ That!

stone cold and dead in the market

share with your sisters

you're supposed to be the responsible one

If you're bored I can give you plenty of things to do

(in disapproving voice): "....joseph...."

You only have one sister, and someday when I'm gone, you'll understand what that means.

oh, for PETE SAKES.

Touch it, and I'll break your arm.

oh, poop!

"(in disapproving voice): "....joseph...."

SCOTT ANTHONY SEWARD!...(any time i swore/farted/burped/was even vaguely ribald)

I reserve the right to say 'I told you so'

children should be seen and not heard

get your elbows off the table

"Tuppence ha'penny looking down on tuppence."
"The dogs won't lick your blood."
"...even in a joke", as in "don't tell people to shut up, even in a joke," or "don't slap your brother, even in a joke."
"If you're not going to do it with a good heart, don't do it at all," (to which my response was always "fine, I won't do it at all, then").
"I didn't ask you how you were, I asked you if you wanted a drink."
"I like Helen Mirren but I don't like Faye Dunaway," (you'd be surprised how often this comes up).

If you can't say a nice thing don't say anything at all

My mum is French, so there was the odd mis-translation:

- When my sister was an infant my Mum took her home from the doctor's who had told her she had "cradle crap"
- If I'd lost something and she found it for me, she'd say "What is this, chicken?"
- Although now a very good English speaker, she still has difficulty with the consonant clusters in "strength" and "length", which end up as "strench" and "lench", which used to confuse me loads.

"Drive carefully"--last thing she always said when you headed home from a visit. It was so automatic, she even said it to me once just before I hung up the phone.

- "we'll all be rooned, said hanrahan"
- "it's where you left it"
- "if you cant remember what you wanted to tell me it can't have been very important"

"You have a CHOICE"

Which then leads to a massive door-slamming row about Agency vs Structure, but that's what happens when your mum has too many degrees from Yale and you're a high school dropout.

Douglas Douglas, strong and able, keep your elbows off the table.

"Tuppence ha'penny looking down on tuppence."

Ah, nostalgia for a phrase I never heard.

stink 'em stank 'em, bee bow buck

- "if you cant remember what you wanted to tell me it can't have been very important"

YES!

a cat may look at a king.

Look it up.

"he doesn't know if it's Tuesday or oranges"

"you'd laugh to see a pudding crawl"

iirc she inherited both of these from her mother, I have never heard either anywhere else ever

second one comes up in autocomplete tho fwiw

"Tuppence ha'penny looking down on tuppence."

this phrase is amazing

mainly because i like the idea of an alternative to 'narcissism of small differences'

Please use "you'd laugh to see a pudding crawl" in context. Is there a context?

"oh dear"
"well, well, well –– three holes in the ground"

get your elbows off the table

―demolition with discretion (m coleman), Thursday, February 16, 2012
10:08 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Erica Erica willing and able get your elbows off the table.

Lol I hadn't seen beachville's post.

Don't be a goop.

Laurel will get that one.

You are the best thing that ever happened to me.

Sweet but v v loaded.

Don't make me wash your mouth out with soap!

You all have a strange way of eating breakfast.

That's what I never understood!

Whenever anything sexual occurs on TV: "Sex rears its ugly head." It's a real expression from the 1930s.

"Insurance pee": precautionary urination before a car ride. Origins unknown.

"close your legs, no one wants to see what you had for breakfast"

The only way I can understand this is as an implication that you ate pussy for breakfast? Which is the kind of crass joke my dad would crack, but never my mom!

"no one wants to see what you had for breakfast" is just blowing my mind

it is gross/hilarious. maybe it means she can see up your butt into your digestive system?

In that case, you must sit very strangely...

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-X7N46EsuPYM/TdT0uNQ2BMI/AAAAAAAAACA/qVI9LRGvKZA/s320/Mork+And+Mindy+4.jpg

xps or if you sit that way it's just going to tumble right out of you? my head...

this has quickly become my favorite thread

Maybe it has to do with skid marks...

*burning shame* :(

vulva over-easy

instant regret

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tkl4Y0sxerQ

lol

at least once a day my mother eats a 'little bowl of nice greens' which is what she calls her spring mix salads. this isn't noteable in itself, except she always announces that's she's eating her 'little bowl of nice greens' to which my father always replies 'at least they're not rude greens, or horrid greens - no, you wouldn't want that.' it is their routine, but they never seem to enjoy it: my father is annoyed that my mother introduced her salad, and my mother feels mocked. but, like clockwork...

i still don't get the "see what you have for breakfast" remark. like...where did that turn of phrase originate?

I have no clue. That is really strange to me and I'm glad I'm not the only one. But

"God bless his soul", as in..."God bless his soul, he tried"

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=I%20could%20see%20what%20she%20had%20for%20breakfast

this....uh...helps? not really

'Keeeeep going'. Said brightly and tensely when we dawdled.

when I'd say "so?" to my mom in response to her saying something would happen, she would often reply "So? sew your pants."

New pickup line: "how about we go back to my place and you show me what you had for breakfast?"

I'll show you what I had for lunch

I'm p sure the "no one wants to see what you had for breakfast" is just a ref to "I can see right up into you" sort of comment. Still gross.

Me:Hey...
Mom: Hay is for horses.

I think we probably say most of these to our kids. but anyway, my mother to me : "you couldn't organise a piss-up in a brothel!"

"And your room is a mell of a hess."

"Don't ask me; go ask your mother."

love this thread

"The job's not done until the tools are put away."

"I'm not yelling. You'll KNOW when I yell!"

"It's toilet time" sung in the tune of "It's Twilight Time", literally every night when I was getting ready for bed until I was about 12.

absolutely loving remy bean's "bowl of nice greens" story. it's like a scene from a low-octane edward albee play.

Also 'Your mother wears army boots' in response to grumbling from children...which I never understood and omg, a quick google tells me it basically means 'your mother is a whore'. I am positive she doesn't know this.

Save for a rainy day

Will wonders never cease!

you need a gratitude attitude

xps to discussion of momma wearing combat boots:

whoa! I had just thought it was a criticism of your mom's femininity. Like, she's doing what is perceived as a perceived man's job/she's butch. It sounds like your mother thought it meant she was really tough! I think I remember seeing the phrase in newspaper comic strips from the 70s or 80s (Bloom County? Doonesbury?).

A bored person is a boring person

A place for everything, and everything in its place.

Waste not, want not.

When we were leaving somewhere to go back home: Home James, and don't spare the horses

don't get pregnant!

― horseshoe, Friday, February 17, 2012 11:59 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

Whenever one of her teenaged daughters was leaving on a date:

"Be good. And if you can't be good, be careful."

Ha, my dad's dad-joke was "Be good. And if you can't be good, be careful. And if you can't be careful, name it after me in 9 months."

lol

haha

"bit goes in a horse's mouth" apparently on the basis that you should use more specific language when referring to nebulously defined small quantities. ach this is absurd. I'm still annoyed.

"unzip a banana" from an ad campaign of her youth and irritatingly deployed at the slightest hint of bananas.

"I'm going to bang your silly heads together" usually directed at my twin brothers but sometimes all of us. usually in a tone of actual belligerence rather than a phatic expression of irritation.

"going to!" used if me or my brothers even gestured towards saying "gonna". also absurd, and get still the voice rings in my ears. my mum was and is a colossal snob, like her high church but lower middle mum before her. they ran a minor cottage industry in forging shibboleths that enabled them to claim superiority over those they were in competition with. this has disintegrated into straight misanthropy now for my mum.

When my mom was genuinely angry at us she would say: "I'm so angry I can't see straight!"

Or else she would channel her anger into the mock threat: "I'll shoot you! I'll shoot you and then boil you in oil!"

you hide and watch

did anyone's use Livia Soprano's "Poor you"?

"you don't have to like it, you just have to eat it"

my bf says that when he would say that he was thirsty, his mother would reply in the imperative: "Drink your spit!"

Oh ha yes, "there's water in the tap" was my mum's response to thirst.

My mum also did "I'm going to bang your heads together" if we were arguing. Also "One of you kids is going to end up crying!" if we were getting overexcited/rough.

xps to discussion of momma wearing combat boots:

whoa! I had just thought it was a criticism of your mom's femininity. Like, she's doing what is perceived as a perceived man's job/she's butch. It sounds like your mother thought it meant she was really tough! I think I remember seeing the phrase in newspaper comic strips from the 70s or 80s (Bloom County? Doonesbury?).

― how's life, Tuesday, July 15, 2014 3:44 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's something to do with hookers in the war...in any case mum uses it (always jokingly) when someone (always a child) is whining or protesting or generally being saucy. I always thought it was a weird thing for a mother to say to her own kid. But as I say, I guarantee she doesn't know its origins.

something to do with hookers in the war

I seem to recall the "aaaah, yer mother wears army boots" line in the mouths of 'tough street kids' in 30s Warner Bros movies, so the war in question could go back a while.

I just got the Mom-est email from my Mom:

We can no longer get our TV upstairs in our bedroom to change channels. It seems that it will forever be stuck on the Weather Channel. I like to listen to the news in the morning while I get ready, but I have had to make do with only weather related news and highlights provided by MSNBC. I am telling you this because I can now pretty much tell you what the weather will be all over the continental US (and sometimes in Alaska and Hawaii).

<3 Mom

when I lived at home if I dared open the fridge after midnight (even if mom was asleep and I planned to clean up afterwards) she'd get up and yell "I'M SICK OF YOU ACTING LIKE THIS IS AN ALL NIGHT DINER".

though tbh that's cos there were many nights we didn't clean up and left messy dishes in the sink and crumbs everywhere