When you want to give an affectionate answer to a kid’s question “What time is it?”–or to answer when he’s boring you silly by repeating the question incessantly–sometimes you say “half past kissing time, time to kiss again.”
I suggested that in a friendly manner to a mother answering her kid’s question, and she looked at me like I was from the moon.
She might have been a 'ferner. Don’t most Americans know it?
I also remember the junior-high-school comeback “half past the cow’s ass, quarter to his balls.” Isn’t there a nice one, sayable by parents, with something “…a freckle,…?”
Anyone know any similar non-English (or British only) responses?
We used that phrase in Canada (specifically rural Ontario) when I was growing up. The variant you’re thinking of is “half past a freckle, quarter to a hair,” which was also common. I never heard the cow’s ass/balls variant, which is surprising because we were a farming community. I will, however, point out its anatomical incorrectness: cows are females and hence don’t have balls.
Two hairs past a freckle…said while looking at one’s non-watch-bearing wrist. People don’t wear watches as much these days (due to cellphones) so that particular pantomime will probably fade further.
I’m afraid I’d look at you as if you were from the moon, too. I’ve never heard the kissing thing. Or the one about the cow’s ass, either.*
As for the “freckle” thing, that one I know. If someone asks you the time, you look at your wrist as if looking at your wrist watch. Only, of course, you don’t have one**, so you say the time is “a hair past a freckle”. You do, of course, have hair there. And maybe a freckle.
It does, perhaps, explain the name of a store not far from here at Hampton Beach, NH. It’s a leather store called “The Cow’s Ass”. It doesn’t have to be related to your time-telling whimsy, but it possibly explains it.
** If you’re actually wearing a wristwatch, of course, this response makes no sense. You’ll have to modify your response and talk about a cow’s ass, or something.
We didn’t use a cow’s hindquarters. It was a horse’s. We also did the half past a freckle as a sarcastic answer when they could see you didn’t have a watch. Never heard the kissing one. Born and bred West Virginian, but spent all of my summers in Chicago growing up.
Cleveland born and bred, with roots in western PA. I’ve never heard the kissing one. I have heard the freckle one and the ass/balls one, but I think the animal for the latter was a monkey, not a cow or a horse.
I have a vague memory that I might have heard the kissing thing before, but it must have been decades ago and it certainly was not common. Perhaps I heard an older relative say it once or twice. I’m sure I’ve never said it myself. I was born in Chicago in the mid 1950s.
Why do you think that it would be universally known? Have you ever heard it in mainstream media?
Never heard of it, but I am young compared to a lot of people on this board. Maybe generational?
ETA: Be careful out there. These days that phrase could be construed as sexual harassment. I can only image an older person saying it, so they may be able to get away with it.
“yinz”?