A ways back I was hanging out with a friend of mine, and we were trying to be quiet so as not to wake up the baby sleeping in the next room. He eventually had to go to the bathroom, which is right next to that room, and when I told him that he should do it quietly, he looked at me and said,** “I’ll be as quiet as a fieldmouse pissing on a cotton ball.”** This expression totally cracked me up, and I had to stifle my laughter so as not to wake the baby. Anyway, I asked him where he got this gem of a statement and he said he picked it up when he was stationed in the south (while he was in the army) and that’s where he thinks it came from.
So, I got to thinking that there probably were other funny and (particularly) descriptive colloquialisms out there like this one. I’d like to hear some more! Anyone know any that they’d care to share?
“Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit !!”
“We’re cookin’ with gas, now.”
“Busy as a one-armed paper hanger.”
“I didn’t know whether to shit or go blind, so I closed one eye and farted.”
“That dog won’t hunt.”
“He got all wrapped around the axle about that.”
“This gravy’s so good it’ll make a puppy pull a train.”
“Naw, it’s so good it’ll make you slap yo grandma.”
“I’ll be dipped in a bucket of shit !!”
I have no idea what it means, skeezix. The patient who said it is a paranoid schizophrenic, and he was less than lucid that day. His explanation included phrases like “the overmind” and “dance with me” and something that sounded like “numerator hat”. At that point I felt it more worthwhile to turn to more productive areas of the examination.
Seriously, though, I was thinking, “Venting one’s spleen is generally what one does in the pit… P’raps he dealt with some patient or another with ‘anger management issues’ and told him to draw a picture of a frog, 'cause, well, the guy likes frogs, and that’ll keep him from getting stuck in solitary every couple weeks for beating the snot out of some other prisoner or guard… And the clever phrase helped him remember this, like his own little mantra, mebbe…”
Sorry. Please forgive the highjack, guitarmax_99.
[actual relevance]
My wife and her stepfather use the old “beat you like a red-headed step-child” as a gag between the two of them. “I didn’t know whether to shit or wind my watch” has always tickled me.
[/actual relevance]
“on him like a pack of dogs on a three-legged cat”
“wigglin’ like a worm on a hot board” (stole this one from NASCAR legend Buddy Baker, when describing a race car)
“whipped him like a rented mule”
“fell out of an ugly tree and hit every branch”
“not the sharpest crayon in the box”