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I Miss my Dear Idiom

The Source

It seems that for every great advance we make in technology, we lose something dear to us. Like idioms. Used to be, every town and most families had their own endearing idioms that spiced our language and in part gave us a bit of identity. Sadly, the advent of radio, television, and now the Internet has made us all sound miserably alike. As the write Allan Sherman used to say, “They all put in a color and it comes out gray.” Sitting on my porch watching the torrential rains of a few days ago, I couldn’t help but think of my Grandpa Bradbury gazing at a downpour and saying, “It’s rainin’ like a tall cow peein’ on a flat rock.” I’ve yet to hear a TV weatherman who could so aptly describe a Midwest monsoon. For years my brother and I thought our grandmother was obsessed with talking about her nightgowns. She’d begin every other sentence with “I have a nighty.” Pretty weird, Grandma. And of course years later we learned to translate her pajama talk into, “I have an idea…” And what ever happened to “Bat out of hell!”? I have no idea why a bat zooming out of Hades would have any particular speed, but there was something particularly visual and exciting about that old idiom. I think we should bring it back. Perhaps we could add a new category of crime to Police Beat in the local newspaper. “Madeline Albers was arrested for speeding on Walnut Street yesterday, but Christine Smith was fined for driving like a bat out of hell.” It adds some distinction to the offense and hints that perhaps Christine had a good reason for breaking the speed limit. “Make hay while the sun shines,” is completely lost on a generation that not only doesn’t know how to make hay but is generally adverse to being out in the sun. I once told a 7th-grade boy entering my classroom after lunch break that his barn door was open. The kid was completely flummoxed and looked around quickly, assuming that a cow was following him. The folks who study such things tell us that most of our American idioms are farm-based, and as fewer and fewer folks know the difference between a combine and a combination salad, the sayings have lost their meaning. You can’t even say that someone was in the doghouse when the listener keeps his pup in an air-conditioned kennel. My Grandpa Orr was always hightailing it. “I seen that bull and I hightailed it for the far fence.” I didn’t to have a tail or even a bull to picture some animal running scared down a country road, it’s tail high in the air. That’s the trouble with replacing idioms. It takes more words. “I was so afraid that my heart started beating fast and so I calculated the distance to the fence on the far side of the pasture.” If Grandpa had talked like that I’d have turned on the television. I was sitting beside two of my Lincoln Land students at Springfield’s Sangamon auditorium recently when one of the characters onstage said that his girlfriend was “the cat’s meow.” The girls beside me nearly convulsed in laughter. This old idiom from the past was still able to strike a responsive cord. I would have said something but they’d have deemed me, “over the hill.” One of my favorites was “rougher than a cob.” Of course when I use this expression with Jr. High students and I’m asked to explain the meaning, I tell them never mind. I don’t imagine that a one of them has ever used an outdoor toilet, but if they had they’d know that idiom pretty much summed up any painful situation. And occasionally I run into an idiom that’s so old that even I have never heard it before. An old fellow at the Threshers’ Convention in Iowa said that it was “colder than the lips of a thunder mug in January.” Thunder mug? I looked it up. He was referring to a chamber pot. Once I knew that then I could feel his pain. Oh, we still have a language peppered with idiomatic phrases. Stupidity seems to be the most common topic. Like “His elevator doesn’t go to the top floor,” “The lights are burning, but nobody’s home,” or “She’s missing the cheeseburger in her Happy Meal,” and idioms are still a popular way of talking about death. Nobody dies these days. We “pass away,” we’re “called home,” “bought the farm,” or “pushed up the daisies.” I can understand trying to soften the blow of a loved one’s death by substituting a less harsh phrase, but dog gone it, Grandpa’s cow and the flat rock says it so perfectly!