My wife calls me an old man (I’m not really) when I come out with some old sayings that sometimes make sense, sometimes don’t. I used to work with a bunch of real old characters and have picked up some odd sayings.
I’ll start with a favorite of mine, when a manager wants to add more people to a job to make it go faster, but doesn’t understand that isn’t how it always works.
“You can’t get 9 girls pregnant and have a baby in a month”
What are yours, especially the ones that make your partner say, “What the ^^% are you talking about?”
Is anyone else hearing Dr. Phil’s voice in their head when they read that?
It’s raining pitchforks and hammer handles.
You can’t sweep sunshine off a porch.
Don’t go visiting with both arms the same length.
You’re slower than molasses in January.
“Tall fences make good neighbors”
“The heart wants what the heart wants”
“The needs of many out weighs the needs of the one”
No malarkey.
No tomfoolery, hooey, hokum, or shenanigans either.
Yer gittin’ too big for your britches.
Putcher nose to the grindstone. (People really said this, it just means work hard)
The best fish is a sausage and the best sausage is a sock full of money.
Slower than a fat lady in a cactus garden…
…Barefooted.
…Blindfolded.
…Nekkid.
Only heard it once, but it was memorable: faster’n a half-fucked fox in a forest fire.
I think these came from grandparents:
Instead of saying, “Let us leave” you say, “Lettuce leaf”
Right as rain
When saying, “I see” you say, “I see, said the blind man as he picked up his hammer and saw”.
As a kid, my mom would often tell me, “You move slower than molasses!”
I was probably 10 years old watching some tv adaptation of Huck Finn when they made mention of molasses. It was the first time I realized it was syrup. Until that point, I had assumed it was just some old timey name of some famous person, probably in the bible.
(I didn’t go to church growing up).
“Even a blind dog finds a bone every once in awhile.”
“Even a broken clock is right twice a day.”
(Not if it’s a digital clock, dad)
When asked how my new turbo equipped car performed I informed the youngsters that “It runs like a raped ape up a tree”. Jaws dropped.
Also the variant “Nine men can’t make a baby in a month.” To which the followup is “because men can’t have babies”.
A grandpa telling me to calm down: “Don’t let your shirttail run up and down your back like a window shade.”
From an “old-maid” aunt: “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.”
Other grandpa admonishing me for smoking: “Hammering another nail in your coffin, are you?”
I knew a kid in high school that had a tshirt that said Whippersnap. I always liked that word, especially more than whippersnapper.
I’ve heard that only with a squirrel and a nut.
Works either way. But a blind dog will never catch a squirrel.
My mom’s expression was “You’re moving so slow that dead flies are fallin’ off ya”.
“Slicker than snail snot!”
And,
“On it, like a crow on a June bug!”
And it’s variant, “Slicker than two eels fuckin’ in a barrel of snot.”
My Daddy used to say “Excuse me, I’m gonna see a man about a Horse”