Whenever my Grandfather, a WWII combat veteran, saw something he didn’t approve of: “The things you see when they don’t let you carry a gun any more…”.
“You may have descended from monkeys but not me” from my grandma. She was a stubborn woman who had a hard time adjusting to the idea of evolution. I’m mostly atheist but I still get a kick out of this one
Not a phrase that my grandmother said, but one I said to her.
“Hey, Granny. I have a doozy for you.”
Backstory:
My grandmother took pride in her Scrabble prowess. I spent a lot of summers growing up with her and she would always play cards, dominoes, or Scrabble with friends. She taught me, my siblings, and cousins all how to play. Thing is that she never took it easy on us, so we always got our butts handed to us when playing her.
Anyhow, I was in my mid 20s at the time and my grandmother was on the verge of beating me by 50 or so points. I was like whatever until I noticed something on the board. I looked at her, looked at the board, and looked at her again. I glared squarely in her eyes and said, “Granny, I have a doozy for you.” Then I proceeded to put my tiles on the board with the word “doozy” landing on a triple word score and the “z” landing on a double letter score. An instant 84 points I think it was.
The way she looked at me was priceless. She looked at me like I stood up on the table, squatted, and took a dump on the board. I blew her butt out the water. She was not pleased. The funny thing was that she had the nerve to challenge the spelling on the off chance that it was “doozie” (which is an alternate spelling), so she lost her next turn on top of everything.
We never played again, but she was willing to take the joke in hand whenever I mentioned it… which was often. A year or so after that she passed after a couple of strokes.
Sorry if this is tldr. I tell this story once every few years or so to a friend, not for them, but to remind myself of her cause I really miss her A LOT. I haven’t told anyone in a while.
So basically whenever I hear the word “doozy” in a sentence, I think of her and smile.
My grandmother said, “The time for tarts are when they’re passing.” She meant “take what’s offered when its offered,” but I want it printed on the programs at my funeral
It probably doesn’t translate very well. But my grandfather always said something like “If you don’t behave I’ll put your head between your two ears” and us kids would always giggle and say that it was already the case. I also often use that phrase now.
From my mom, not my grandparents, but we’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of this one
“If I find it, can I hit you with it?”
Used when we were bugging her about not being able to find something. Don’t believe she ever made good on that threat, but it usually did it’s intended purpose of getting us to quit bugging her and find it ourselves. And if it was something we really needed help finding it would have been an acceptable trade-off.
My sister got a lot of use out of it with her college roommates and my wife and I use it with each other pretty regularly.
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