I didn’t mean to say it.
Honest, it just slipped out out of my mouth without one single warning from my brain, although I hadn’t heard it verbalized for 40 years. Back then it was spat from my mother’s mouth on a regular basis, whenever she felt the need to express incredulity or outrage at stupid people, stupid things that wouldn’t work right, or stupid circumstances.
Sometimes she hurled the phrase at me and my sister in a combination of all three.
Mama wielded the phrase like a sterilized curse born of too many episodes of the old school rural Georgia law she was raised under: Say-something-nasty-and-you-get-your-mouth-washed-out-with-soap. Blech.
So imagine my surprise when, despite its state of hibernation for decades, the ding-dang phrase just rolled off my tongue slicker than a greased pig: “Well, kiss my foot!”
Of course, delivery is EVERYTHING to making this phrase ring with the vitriol it was intended … each word is punctuated with multiple verbal exclamation marks and the “f” and “t” at the beginning and end of “foot” are overly lip-emphasized with a little flying spit and supplemental venom.
There was no question of the enormity of feeling behind Mama’s emotive explosion, even if the actual less-than-hair-curling words made one pause.
That’s how I learned that you can express rage with nary a cuss word. “In your anger, do not sin” (Ephesians 4:26 NIV). See, it’s biblical. My granny was a master at it too. Them red-clay-blooded, God-fearing Georgia farm gals had worked this self-expression nuance down to a science. This way, you could be angry without sinning. Or at least being punished for it.
When Mama introduced foot-kissing into a conversation, you’d best run out the door and hide behind the barn before she started blessing the cattle. Yep. If there was any expression worse in our household than “Kiss my foot!” it was the dreaded, blood-curdling epitaph, “God bless a milk cow!”
Oh, lawd. When Mama dragged the Almighty into it and started blessing those milk cows, you knew you were in BIG trouble. Deep doodoo. Flee for your life and don’t look back kind of trouble.
So last week when I inadvertently started channeling my mother by issuing the foot-kissing invitation to a total stranger, I knew cow-blessing was probably just around the subconscious corner.
I can’t think about my mama’s rural-steeped faux profanity without remembering the first time she met my new college boyfriend. I was a freshman and hadn’t been dating Chuck more than three months when I brought him home one weekend to meet my family. I already sorta knew he was the one, and was surely hoping he’d come to that conclusion too. I wanted more than anything for everything to go right on this visit and for our relationship to rise to the next level. The logical next step was to introduce him to my folks.
Now Chuck was from New York and spoke thusly, but I’d been around Mama’s rural Georgia-farm-speak so long that I’d forgotten how – um- different it sounded to the rest of the world. Sadly, I neglected to warn Chuck about her … shall we say … quaint colloquialisms. BIG mistake.
So during our very first conversation around the supper table, Chuck politely insisted on getting up to refill his own water glass instead of taking Mama up on her hostess offer to do it for him, and she graciously responded, “Okay, be that way, you ol’ jackass, you.”
To the untrained ear, I suppose that may have seemed like she was calling him a bad, bad name. But my entire family laughed, knowing that she was simply relating in her own unique way that he was stubborn. Not a curse word at all, just interchangeable with “donkey.” And everyone knew donkeys were stubborn. They were one and the same to her. She had called everyone she loved a jackass – including me – numerous times during our lives, still loving us fiercely all the while.
But Chuck, not knowing any of this, became suddenly very quiet and kind of folded in on himself. He excused himself very quickly after dinner and retreated to his room, where he isolated himself for the next two hours because he thought my family hated him. After all, Mama had already cussed him out when he hadn’t even been there one full day, and then everyone else laughed at him.
Sigh. We weren’t laughing at him; we were laughing with him. Because what else can you do when a strange middle-aged woman you just met calls you a jackass?
When I finally explained the cultural misunderstanding to him sufficiently enough that he risked venturing out once again into the general population of our household, Mama patted him on the arm and said warmly, “This family is full of jackasses; you should fit right in.”
And he did. Now my husband for nearly 50 years, we laugh together about Mama’s bizarre terms of endearment (she’s been blessing them milk cows from heaven for six years now), but I declare I never thought I’d do it too. I guess it’s true: Sometimes when I least expect it, I open my mouth and my mother falls out.
How about you, dearest BFF (Blessed Friend Forever)? Do you ever channel your mother? Do you think some of those wonky lifetime habits of hers are inevitable for you, too, to adopt?
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