If you melt in the rain, are you sugar or a witch?
Northerners like Eustacia and me were told when growing up: “Don’t worry about going in the rain; you’re not sugar, you won’t melt.”
Now she brings me reports of Southern kids being told: “If you’re bad you’re a witch and you’ll melt in the rain.”
When you answer the poll, please also post what part of the country you’re from.
Never heard of either saying before outside of the Oz reference. Grew up in ohio.
Southern California:
Expressed as a negative – “Sure it’s raining, but don’t worry. I’m not so sweet that I’ll melt.”
I heard it as sugar or shit.
It’s just a little rain and you aren’t made of sugar or shit so you aren’t going to melt or float away.
If I melt, I am both sugar and witch/warlock . . . Evil Sweetness.
I’ve never heard either in the context of rain, and only the witch thing in direct association with Oz.
“Don’t worry - you’re wet enough already” was fairly common when I was growing up (Southern England) - and “wet” in this context implies naive/sappish
Never heard either. Pennsylvania.
Someone left the cake out in the rain, though, and apparently that’s a bad idea.
Dorothy was a murdering bitch!
(Does that answer your question?)
I think I first heard of it in a Saki story where the people turned out to actually be made of sugar.
EDIT: However, my personal version is “Don’t worry, I’m not the Wicked Witch of the West.” I didn’t realized that was a Thing elsewhere, though; thought I was just being a smart alec.
Bees are on the what now?
I think I first heard of it in a short story by Isaac Asimov.
Sugar - I grew up in Connecticut, with my parents hailing from Maine and New Hampshire.
I heard it as sugar with the come-back that salt melts as well.
I’m not from your country, but still was told that I wasn’t made of sugar.
Sugar. I’ve heard it as long as I can remember.
My husband used to say the opposite- he’d give me his umbrella or jacket, because “I was so sweet I’d melt in the rain.” He was born in the northeast but grew up in the south, but his parents were generations-back New Englanders, so who knows.
Born and raised in the south, never heard the witch version.
I’ve lived in Washington state all my life, and always heard sugar.
Sugar. Southern California.
Northeast (raised in MD, parents from NJ), and I only remember hearing “You won’t melt!” if my brother or I complained about going out in the rain. Neither sugar nor witches were mentioned specifically, but it was always clearly a reference to the Wizard of Oz/Wicked Witch of the West.