Sayings From History

My history.  My pop life history.  It seems like we pick up sayings over our lives that become embedded in our speech.  For instance, "make my day," is a popular phrase.  I think my mother even knows the saying, and I don't know if she's ever seen the movie.

I realized the other day that I regularly use certain sayings that have strange beginnings.  For instance, "hello nurse."  It's a non-swear exclamation I picked up from the Animaniacs show many years ago.  I only watched the show a few times, but it was such a cute phrase I incorporated it into my vocabulary. 

The same goes for "mama pajama," a similar phrase I picked up from one of my favorite movies, Mystery Men.

Then there are the strange "completion phrases" that seem to come up.  When someone says one thing, you remember specific completion words that come afterwards.  I got a little book titled, "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy" from a popular Saturday Night Live skit series that must have been twenty years ago.  In one of the deep thoughts, there's a story about accidentally falling off a tall building and a plan to be saved if this were to ever happen to you.  You should go all limp and maybe someone will try to catch you, "Because hey, free dummy." 

Was it the sheer bizarreness of the story that made me remember and later connect the words, "but hey" with the completion words, "free dummy"?  You'd be amazed how often people say just the two words, "but hey..."

Then there are the personal sayings.  They're not from a movie or pop culture.  Maybe they're from someone you knew or a funny inside joke you have with friends.  I can think of two, both of them I started out hating, and yet, in the right situation, I use them.  How crazy is that?  The first is "huggles." 
Someone said it to me one time and I thought it was so totally goofy.  I use it as a joke sometimes.  It always makes me laugh when I say huggles. 

The other is "hun pie."  I heard a lady I respected many years ago call her husband "hun pie" instead of "honey" or "honey pie."  It sounded like a strange shorting but I realized later I used it all the time and I didn't even know I was using it. 

I know, I was just talking about idioms and how I dislike using them in writing.  And then I realize I have not only cultural but personal idioms.  We have such a changeable, malleable language.

The Big Boy Update:  He's having fun with Dusty.  The sister of my good friend Brek is a nanny.  She's only nannying three days a week so I asked her if she could come over to help today, and then make it more regular in the future as I want to do some work-related things.  He's having a great time with her, showing her all his toys. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  She's over four months now and she is still doing better than I'd ever have expected sleeping through the night.  She wakes up early, before nine, many mornings, but she rarely needs to be settled in the middle of the night.  She's still very interested in sucking some part of her hand, but she's not angry there are mittens on.  She just sucks the material when she's lost the pacifier.

Right-size Countdown:  10.1 pounds to go