Just Sayin'

When my mother was a teenager, she used to clean her older sister Isabel’s house to earn a little money.  One day Isabel had to go somewhere and instructed Mom to “just hit the high spots.”  Mom dutifully only dusted the high spots – cabinet tops, upper shelves, the tops of window frames, etc.  When my aunt returned home she wondered why her younger sister had not dusted anything.  When Mom explained that she had followed her directions and only dusted the high spots, Isabel explained that “hitting the high spots” meant to give the main pieces of furniture and quick, light dusting – not a thorough pick-things-up-and-dust-under-them dusting of everything in the house.

Moms, aunts, and grandmothers are bastions of verbal wisdom.  Some of it they get from their mothers who got it from their mothers.  But sometimes I think they just invent these clever phrases in moments of frustration. One of my aunts and a neighbor lady used to tell their children to go play in the highway.  No one ever called DFS on them because this was just their loving way of saying, “Go away kid, you bother me.”

In our house, when we went outdoors to play and forgot to close the door, it was not uncommon to hear Mom call out, “You need a hook on your butt!”  That was her not-so-subtle way of telling us to turn around and pull the door shut behind us.  If we had indeed possessed the proverbial hook on our butts, said hook would have grabbed the door as we headed out and pulled it shut for us.  I have never heard of another mother that used this phrase.  I think mine made it up – after all, this was the same woman who told us that we would never learn to whistle if we didn’t eat our bread crusts.

I made up such a phrase when my kids were little.  It happened thusly: Often when we would go on an errand or outing, one or more child would insist on bringing along a vital, important, and crucial personal item.  Invariably, at some point during our outing, I would be approached with said life-sustaining item and asked to hold or carry it.  On one of these occasions I refused.  I looked my child in the eyes and said “I am not a pack mule.”  I was met with a “huh?” and had to explain what a pack mule was.  They then had to carry the now tiresome item themselves until we returned to the car.  It didn’t take long before my children stopped trying to pawn their possessions off on me.  They knew what they would hear if they tried. Maybe someday they'll use this phrase on their kids.  I'm curious to find out.