My Pop, whenever he was asked where something was: “It’s in Annie’s room, behind the clock.” There was no Annie in our family, nor a bedroom with a clock you could put things behind.
Also my Pop whenever asked what something was: “It’s a wig-wam for a goose’s bridle.”
These may not be iconic to anyone else, but they are sure as hell iconic in family lore, and us grand-kids are making sure we pass it down as much as we can.
All my grandparents passed when I was young and I didn’t know them well. However, my uncle quotes his father quite a bit. General advice “Never do anything you wouldn’t want to read about in the paper.” Whenever he offers you something, or is jokingly telling you why you shouldn’t do something “It will make your babies come out naked and screaming” Also my mom’s side of the family has a common last name and my grandfather stated that if we met another person that shared our last name that we could accept them as family if they were “reasonably dressed, moderately sober, and not asking for money”
My grandfather would say “Is your daddy a glassmaker?” And when we’d inevitably say no, “Then get from in front the tv!” Meaning we were in his way, as children tend to be lol. Me and husband use this all the time with each other.
My paternal grandfather had a lot of sayings: “here’s me head, me arse is coming”, “she walks with a bit of a run”, etc - typing them out a lot had to do with the way people walked. There are more though.
Whenever I got hurt, my grandmother would say “It’ll get better before you’re married!” I use that to this day with my nieces and nephews, who are not amused.
My grandpa was german. In german, jetztwhich in english would be pronounced something like “yetst”, means “now”. His whole life he would use “yet” in place of where an english-native speaker would say “now”, and i always thought that was adorable.
Add comment