I was a messy little kid (still am, at age 42). My grammie used to say to me, “come over here and let me comb your hair/tuck in your shirt/wipe your face, etc…, you look like Lizzie off the Pickle Boat”. I guess pickle boats are messy places.
I still refer to myself as “Lizzie off the Pickle Boat” from time to time.
I grew up with “stop crying, or I will give you something to cry about”. With our kids, while playing around, we will say “stop laughing, or I will give you something to laugh about”.
My teacher from middle school did this one.
Us: “Hey, Miss Smith, did you get a haircut?”
Her: “No, I got them all cut.”
In my family, you don’t *dare ask for a second opinion & if you accidentally do, you cringe, because you know what’s coming.
My Daddy always told me that I couls" tear up an anvil" He also told me that I had two brains " one was lost, and the other was out looking for it"
Hey dad, can I ask you a question? You just did! Har har.
Buxtehude? Buxtehude - Wikipedia
Hey, that’s my mom’s phrase. And given our family’s inability to run with any speed, she is 100% right.
My wifes grandmother, who was a tough old bird, would look at you and say a phrase if you exasperated her that I have never heard anywhere else. I choked on my tea the first time she said it. “You make my butt want a dip of snuff.” She was the most likable onery person I’ve ever known.
My dad and uncles had a saying for anything particularly tastey- “tatalarping titty”. Never heard it anywhere else. There were lots of standard things like “only one color green on that light” for people who didn’t pay attention when the light changed but tatalarping titty? You have to wonder the origin of that one.
'nother one of Mom’s:
We would regularly ask her what was for dessert in the hope of wearing her down to actually make a dessert. She would inevitably answer with, “light, bright, just right… nothing!”
“Is there any pudding left?”
Dad: “It all left”
“What’s for dinner?”
Mum: “Duck under the table”.
“… named the baby Zachary.”
Dad: “Ah, another ugly baby”
“How do you figure that?”
Dad: “His face looks Zachary like his butt”.
“Make me a sandwich”
Me: (with a flourish of my invisible wand) “Ding! You’re a sandwich!”
(I know I’m coming in with that second, but it was freaking hilarious when I used to do it to my brother)
Think it’s going to rain?
“It won’t rain if there’s enough blue sky to knit a cat a pair of pajamas”.
Many things that have already been posted have made me smile and nod.
My grandmother seemed to have a strong aversion to mouth breathing. Whenever any of us would go all slack jawed and glassy eyed she’d say either “Close your mouth. You’re catching flies” or “Close your mouth. You look halfwitted.”
If she was well and truly angry she’d say “knock it off or you’ll have a punishment so bad I haven’t even thought of it yet!”
Sometimes she had thought of it: “If you don’t stop that right now I’m gonna rip your arm out of the socket and beat you over the head with the bloody stump!”
The thing she probably said to me more times than any other thing, or than to any other person was “Well, if you wore shoes it wouldn’t happen.”
If something was far away it was “in East McKeesport” (as in "I would’ve been here sooner but I had to park in East McKeesport.) Another family I know calls it “the back side of beyond.”
My mom adopted a lot of her mom’s sayings but had a few I associate more with her than my grandmother.
Can you make me a sandwich/Ta-daa! You’re a sandwich got a lot of play in our house. Along the same lines if one of us said “I feel like a slushie.” [meaning “I feel like having a slushie”] Mom would come back with. “Funny, you don’t LOOK like a slushie.” (and usually follow up with a broad Arr-arr-arr wocka wocka laugh.)
“I see a patch of blue; it’s going to clear up”
“Don’t chew your fingernails; you’ll get worms”
just the word that popped into my head reading that.
My grandma would say this to me after I did something stupid.
“So what did we learn?”
My grandpa used to refer to my (then ringlet-curly) hair as “steel wool.”
Thanks, grandpa.
I had a highschool teacher who would do something similar:
student: I have a question
him: I have an answer. Des Moine Iowa, 1964
His theory was that someone, someday would ask the question that would go with than answer and they would be amazed. (I confess that I have, on occasion, appropriated this game.)
My mother:
Replying to an unreasonable request that begins “I want…” – “People in hell want ice water.”
When one of the children would grudging agree to perform some mundane chore… “You’ll get your reward in heaven.”
She would also drop pithy Portuguese expressions here and there, the most useful of which is “mais fica” (mazh feeka)…when somebody turns down an offer of a second helping of food. Literally, just means “makes more”, but in context means: good – leaves more for me.
Does your mother possibly have a German background? Because “Lügen haben kurze Beine”=“Lies have short legs” is a very common German saying.