Favorite Phrases Your Dad/Mom Used on You.........

(after getting hurt and crying as a kid)

dad; "you'll be a man before your mother"

once I was a bit older, "that's better than a poke in the ass with a half-round bastard file"
 
DAD: I'll kick your butt so hard, you'll have bad breath for a week....
 
a little surprised at the amt. of profanity!

I remember a nice one from my mom: If we were sad or crying, she'd start poking around.. peeking up our sleeves or tickling our armpits, looking in our ears, etc. saying,, "where's a smile!? Is it in here? Maybe it's here.." We'd end up getting distracted and tickled and snapped out of it.

It came to mind yesterday when DH was grumpy and I tried it on him.. it works!!
 
From my grandfather, a NYC fire captain: "Never go through a window head first," when someone was being hasty.

My mother: "Don't wish your life away," when we would say I wish this or I wish that.
 
erm.. I've heard some choice phrases out of BIL directed towards his kids.. but growing up I never heard my parents use bad language. I'm not a prude; my parents weren't super-religious or anything.. it just didn't happen. They would never say "sh*t", "ass".. or even "butt"! The worst was "Goddammit"!
I got chastised at 17 or 18 for asking my mom what some "crud" in the sink was.

"Don't make me come up there!"
 
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erm.. I've heard some choice phrases out of BIL directed towards his kids.. but growing up I never heard my parents use bad language. I'm not a prude; my parents weren't super-religious or anything.. it just didn't happen. They would never say "sh*t", "ass".. or even "butt"! The worst was "Goddammit"!
I got chastised at 17 or 18 for asking my mom what some "crud" in the sink was.

"Don't make me come up there!"

My parents never ever swore. Never once in my hearing. My father considered it lazy and disrespectful.
 
I got chastised at 17 or 18 for asking my mom what some "crud" in the sink was.
Another nuclear victim.

The urban legend is that "CRUD" is an acronym for "Chalk River unkown deposits", a test reactor displaying corrosion products in its core. The literature is so contaminated with this phrase that it's become difficult to determine the history, but I think the acronym is some early Dilbert engineer's joke.

Usually metal shavings or other particles become activated by the core's neutron flux, settle out in pipe corners and other low-flow areas, and give off tremendous amounts of gamma radiation that greatly complicate maintenance & repairs. The worst offender is a cobalt isotope used in stainless-steel alloys. So nukes spend a lot of time looking for ways to use materials that don't generate crud, to design smooth-flowing piping systems, to shock the crud loose from nooks & crannies, and to trap it in filters.

Here endeth today's nuclear vocabulary trivia lesson. I hope this helps everyone sleep better tonight...
 
"Go do something constructive." (usually when I was bothering him)

My father never asks someone to help him. He simply lets the guilt associated with NOT HELPING force people to help. When people would ask if he needed to hand, he'd take them up on it. (how's that for psychology?)
 
When we were younger & either went to visit relatives or else we had company & we were getting a little too noisy, my dad would say "children should be seen & not heard".

+1 to that one....:p

Funny, when I tell people my dad used to say that, they would characterize that as cruel and unfeeling. Now that I'm older, I agree with him. Children should be seen and not heard. Unfortunately, we have way too many parents who coddle their children and tolerate poor behavior. No wonder we end up with spoiled brats (Paris Hilton, et al.) as role models for our kids.
 
My father considered it lazy and disrespectful.

Martha -- exactly. My parents came from completely different religious and social backgrounds but as far as bad language was concerned their attitudes were identical: it was an issue of not giving in to "low" impulses. One sold oneself short by stooping to cussing. Of course once I left home I picked up a ton of bad habits and had quite a bit of fun with my new-found vocabulary.. but I've toned it down, not with any great conscious effort. Around kids I find I don't have to bite my tongue at all, for the most part; it would never enter my mind to use many of the colorful expressions I've seen here in a "family" context--just instinctually.
 
speaking of bad language, and things your father said, one of my father's favourites was, when he was disgusted with his job and how he didn't like working for his boss,

"if he says sh*t, I say 'how much?'"
 
Around kids I find I don't have to bite my tongue at all, for the most part; it would never enter my mind to use many of the colorful expressions I've seen here in a "family" context--just instinctually.
Our kid will eagerly chew her arm off to get out of Dad's little parental talks with her. And she'd probably welcome a few choice descriptive four-letter epithets instead of the polysyllabic vocabulary I use for my impressions of her behavior.

A couple years ago she was really worried when I told her that her behavior would tempt any parent to defenestrate her. Somehow she confused it with the word "castrate" and the situation just got worse from there...

In an amygdala hijack of 14-year-old rage the other day, she exploded at me "You're ignorant!!" I'll just draw the stage's curtains on the subsequent scene.
 
... One sold oneself short by stooping to cussing. Of course once I left home I picked up a ton of bad habits and had quite a bit of fun with my new-found vocabulary.. but I've toned it down, not with any great conscious effort. ...quote]

+1
swearing=poor command of the language.
The Navy had me dividing words - abso-#@%-lutely, out-#%$-standing. It was a concious effort to retrain my speech - I listened to myself on land and out of the navy and didn't like how i sounded.
 
swearing=poor command of the language.
The Navy had me dividing words - abso-#@%-lutely, out-#%$-standing. It was a concious effort to retrain my speech - I listened to myself on land and out of the navy and didn't like how i sounded.

I almost never swore while I was in the Navy, mainly because it drove the guys in my division insane that I didn't.
 
Swearing

I never swore in front of my parents. My parents swore all the time. I stuck to swearing with my friends or at the gas station I worked at. I was proud that I'd never screwed up and said bad words in front of them.

My father-in-law never swore. He was famous among his kids for once cautioning them on "hurling epithets."

My grandmother used to say "Tell 'em to go **** in their hat." My grandfather would reply in rote "That's not very nice." Then Granma would say "You're right. Tell them to go **** in their Easter bonnet."

My father wouldn't question our judgement when we asked permission to do outrageous things. He'd just tell us to do whatever we thought was right. We always picked the sensible thing.

Mike D.
 
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...
swearing=poor command of the language.

I think there is some truth to this, but not always. Case in point: my grandfather.

He had raised swearing to an art form. An incredible mix of Russian, German, and English.

I asked him about it once, and he thoughtfully explained to me that each of the 3 languages had their strong points. German lacks any sexual-type swearing. Most German profanity is scatalogical in nature. Russian swearing is very vocabulary-rich, but often involves sex and one's maternal paretage.... English, on the other hand, is sort of the "swiss army knife" of swearing. It can do most things, but none well.

It was quite a blistering experience to hear, although I didn't understand the Russian. But he certainly demonstrated good command of more than one language.
 
I have been back with a my parents for five days now and haven't really heard anything that are stock phrases or the like. They are witty and educated. I have never heard them argue or swear. It was nice listening to all their stories.
 
I have been back with a my parents for five days now and haven't really heard anything that are stock phrases or the like. They are witty and educated. I have never heard them argue or swear. It was nice listening to all their stories.
"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."
-- Mark Twain
 
Hmm..other day in the supermarket I was making faces at gabe to make him laugh and keep him occupied while DW did a little shopping. A while into it I mumbled "hard to believe i'm going to go from being the funniest person you know to a major embarrassment in about 3-5 years..."

Lady next to me overheard me and tried desperately to suppress laughing all the way down the aisle...
 
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