We’re feeling pretty reminiscent here at Starts At 60, this Christmas.
We got chatting in the office, and realised that collectively, our folks all had a number of oddball little sayings that they used to wheel out when we were kids. At the time, we accepted them as normal parental lingo. It’s only when you consider them decades later that they seem so, well, weird. Here are some of the best, and what we think they mean. If we’re wrong, please feel free to let us know – otherwise, tell us the funny things your parents used to say.
“You can’t put brains on statues”
“Are your ears painted on?”
“Do you live in a tent?”
“What do you think this is, bush week?”
“Get your laughing gear around that”
“Fair crack of the whip”
“That looks like a dog’s breakfast”
“Just a few sandwiches short of a picnic”
“Buckleys and none” or “You’ve got Buckley’s chance”
“Hit the frog and toad”
“Do the Harry”
“Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater”
“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”
“She’s apples”
“I could eat a horse”
“I could eat the crotch out of a low-flying duck”
“Get the shit off the liver”
“Money doesn’t grow on trees you know”
If a kid is pulling a face: “The wind will change!”
“Hold your horses”
“You’ll live”
“I didn’t come down in the last rain shower”
“Wacky do!”
“…And if they told you to jump off a bridge?”
“Because I said so”
“And who do you think you are? The Queen of Sheeba?”
“There are starving kids in Africa, now eat your dinner!”
“Put a sock in it”
“Hay is for horses”
“I don’t know, CAN you?”
“The grass isn’t always greener”