Well Cri-ma-nit -ly!
The sound of that word coming out of the radio made me stop dead in my tracks. Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle! ! I had never heard anyone else except Mom say that! Instantly I was transported back to my childhood. She used to yell that word out of sheer frustration pretty much on a daily basis….with an extra double emphasis on the NIT. And here I always thought she had made it up. Holy Moses! It got me wondering about all those other unusual words and sayings she would seem to pull out of the top of her hat.
Crimany sakes! What about her “made-up” words like nitpicky, willy-nilly, and gobbledygook? And there was whippersnapper, rigamarole and nincompoop? Or Jibber jabbering, lickety-split and rambunctious? Diddlysquat, caca may me, and lollygagging? For land sakes, I assumed these were all part of my Mom’s own personal vernacular. I had never bothered to look them up in a dictionary because I didn’t even know how they could possibly be spelled.
Well for crying out loud!! Now with the magic of Spell Check, come to find out that they are actually all real words! Imagine that! I dug a little deeper into my memory and scrounged up more of her sayings and googled them. To my amazement, most everything that she said has been yelled by moms all over the world for centuries! They’re called “mommalies” but I’ll call them Momma Lee’s. The list I compiled ended up being an arm and a leg long.
No ifs, ands or buts about it! When it came to cuss words, Mom had a knack for creatively expressing her feelings without setting a bad example and using the “wash-your-mouth-out-with-soap” words. I recall one time hearing Mom say “This is one Mell of a Hess that you’ve made!” Unfortunately, hearing her say it made me snicker which got me in more deep-doo -doo.
Holy Moly! Looking at the list, it was obvious that a lot of her creative explosions had to do with Heaven, Hell and God.
.
Hell’s bells, come hell or high water, you are going to hell in a hand basket, when hell freezes over!
Heaven’s to Betsy, I swear on a stack of Bibles, you look like hell warmed over, as God is my witness!
On a wing and a prayer, I swear to God, you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t, and God only knows why!
Speak of the devil; you need to use the brains God gave you, for the love of God!
The God awful truth is, only heaven knows why, this is a living hell, so to hell with it all!
Honest to God! I learned a lot more at home from Mom’s daily Catechism class than the one taught by Sister Mary Blanche at St. Mary’s.
For Pity’s sake, she also gave us other phrases that actually taught us a thing or two. When she said that we were like some “wild kids from Borneo ”, I went to our trusty/dusty World Book Encyclopedia to see where in the heck that was. While I was there, I looked up where Sheba Africa was from our house because someday I wanted to ride my bike there and give them all the food that Mom made me eat because of those starving kids there. You bet your life, I would have been happy to share my canned asparagus with them! Unfortunately, it looked too far so that was the way the cookie crumbled. Interestingly, I also could see on the Atlas that I was not ready to take that slow boat to China
sir-ee, Bob!
Jeepers! There were basic mathematical, scientific and financial facts I actually gleaned from her rants. I learned to count at a young age with her “I’m going to give you till the count of ten” and even bigger numbers from her saying “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million/bazillion/gazillion times”. I learned if you give an inch, you can take a mile and that two heads are better than one; that it takes two to Tango; and that common sense came in several sizes…an ounce, a lick, a bit and sometimes none at all. I for sure did not want to get behind the eight ball (although I didn’t know what happened to balls 1 thru 7) and that I didn’t know much more than the man in the moon. I learned that if Mom had a dime for every time she heard that one, she wouldn’t be a day late and a dollar short. You can bet your bottom dollar on that!
Jiminy Crickets! There were animals that I would have never known existed if it weren’t for Mom…like a big lummox , those mongrels and something called a poppycock. Plus there were so many interesting facts about other species. There are actually such things as:
Wild goose chases, bulls in china closets and chickens that go crazy when their heads are cut off (we witnessed that for ourselves). Mules are stubborn, jaybirds are naked, pigeons have toes, hens are wet, and bats are in hell. Bedbugs are crazy and they might bite you at night; there are bunches of bull and herds of wild elephants. Ants can often get in your pants and butterflies can somehow get in your stomach. You can play possum but curiosity killed the cat so don’t monkey around. And don’t even think about opening up that can of worms!!
I grew up to realize that there was a lot of truth in these phrases that she would use; and I put them to good use later on in life:
If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.
There are always two sides to every story.
Speak now or forever hold your peace!
Don’t bite off more than you can chew!
It’s feast or famine! (Debbie’s favorite)
Don’t just sit there like a bump on a log! Make yourself useful!
Hate is a strong word!
Share and share alike!
Sorry but you are low man on the totem pole!
Don’t feel like you’re the Lone Ranger!
Say you’re sorry…and mean it!
If you don’t like it, lump it!
Hind sight is 20/20 (It took me awhile to realize she wasn’t talking about my hiney)
And finally “Always refill those darn ice cube trays!”
Gee Willikers! By the looks of this story, I sure have used a lot of MommaLee’s to express myself. So, I hate to admit it but I guess I have now officially turned into my mother.
Well, Crimanitly!
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