Family Traits

Every family has some hidden skills lurking in the gene pool. Our family tree is blessed with individuals with an uncanny ability to turn a phrase. My great, great aunt Matilda was the earliest on record for demonstrating this gift. Through diaries and letters we know that she stomped on a big cockroach in her kitchen next to the woodpile near the iron stove. She speculated that its last words were likely- “Don’t tread on me”. It’s still funny today, It even became a state motto. 

My cousin Francine was said to be a little daft in the head at the time but she earned the respect of the whole family when she wrote a letter of support to our English friends at the opening of the Great War. She offered advice to the big guy- “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”. These words were immortalized even though they made absolutely no sense.  The cigar really sold it. 

My great uncle Jerimiah came up with a good one too- “If you come to a fork in the road, take it”. He came up with that one while getting lost on some unmarked back road driving his old red Chevy pickup. He thought it was so hilarious that he had it printed in the letters section of the local paper. A certain famous baseball player actually paid him to write more of this nonsense. Uncle Jeremiah never got the credit but he did get the cash. He used it to buy a set of new tires and a few road maps.

My cousin Billy Joe was quite a drinker in his early youth. He’d get mixed up a lot when he was trying to tell a story. A particularly brilliant phrase popped out of his mouth one day after a few cold ones on the front porch. Sitting in his rocker he uttered the famous words- “A stitch in time saves nine”. His words seemed wise until he sobered up and explained himself. He was trying to say how he got a stitch in a fall in the mine. I know, it made more sense in the first case. 

I think Billy Joe’s cousin twice removed, Felicity, also blossomed into a wordsmith. She was heard to pronounce these famous words many years ago after eating a delicious piece of homemade apple pie at our Thanksgiving table last year- “Yaba daba do”. While it makes no sense, it has a certain charm about it and it somehow made it into print. Since there was no copyright on it, poor Felicity never profited from it. 

My brother Joey Dee also was quite gifted in the tongue. He loved camping or at least he called it camping. It was just an excuse to drink beer, fart and defecate in the woods. He called it “getting back to nature”. But his real claim to fame came when he slept under the stars one night because he couldn’t find the zipper on the tent. He chose an unfortunate spot to slumber. The expression “ants in your pants” was born. The alliteration was brilliant. 

My younger sister Charlotte May wasn’t particularly successful in her lampshade painting business, but that was partly due to her living in the remote northern reaches of Michigan.  She worked all summer selling her shades to tourists who came mostly to buy the postcards which were postmarked “Hell, Michigan”. She invited her customers to return for the Christmas sales- two shades for one- when the weather turned really cold around September 10th. She invited her summer customers to come back “When Hell freezes over”. Little did she know these words would live on. 

You never know when a phrase will hit you and change your life. I just returned from my doctor’s office. I have had a cough that wouldn’t go away. I feared the worst. Besides grreat language skills, cancer also runs in the family. Like any true red-blooded American the path I chose to take was to ignore it and hope it would go away. But finally I was driven to see the man of medicine by an insistent wife. I sat there in his office waiting room pondering my fate. He was an hour late as you would expect from an important person. Luckily I brought along an apple to sustain myself while waiting. On some wild impulse as he strolled into the waiting room I suddenly rose and threw the apple at him as I ran quickly out of the office. 

I guess “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” would do just fine. Maybe I can sell it to Mott’s applesauce company and finally make some real  money out of this family gift- if only  that cough would just go away.