While responding to a comment from vuzvilla earlier today (if you haven't read his diary Oklahoma. Could happen. yet, do so ASAP), I found myself subconsciously reverting back to my childhood in SW Texas by calling him a "little piss ant!" I was amazed that this phrase, which I grew up hearing as a child all too often, materialized so effortlessly but I wasn't sure that vuzvilla would realize it was being used by me as an affectionate term from my childhood, so I deleted "piss ant" and substituted "mischief maker". Didn't hold the same panache for me but when in doubt, leave it out, right?
Anyway, this brief flash of a colorful colloquialism put me in a nostalgic mood for memory mining of other delectable, or not, delights from childhood. I invite you to add some of your own in the commentary.
I was a tomboy growing up in SW Texas and tagged along with my older brother, Bud, and his friends as often as they would allow. I became quite proficient at shooting marbles, riding a bike (boy's bike, of course, which I still prefer today), spitting watermelon seeds, catching cottontails, prairie dogs, quail, horny toads, doodle bugs, and fire flies, flying june bugs, finding arrowheads and turquoise, and generally just living an idyllic Norman Rockwell childhood.
However, we did have some interesting colloquialisms; to wit, the aforementioned
Piss ant as in "You little piss ant, you better get in here or else!" Years later, I ran across the word "pissant" and found that it also could be used as a derogatory word or slur, but in our household, it was used almost as a term of endearment. Almost.
Hockey as in "Hey, Bud, don't step in that pile of hockey!" Imagine my horror when, at the age of 9, we moved from TX to CA and I found there was an actual sport called hockey which involved pushing around something called a puck with a stick!
Horny toads as in horned toads, a charming little reptilian character that we would catch just to turn him/her over to rub his/her belly. He/she would almost swoon with ecstasy. I miss many things from my TX childhood and the horny toad is right at the top of my list.
Pallet as in "Why don't you two take a nap on the pallet?" A pallet was a homemade quilt laid out on the floor, usually in the living room so your mother could keep an eye out for shenanigans, on which you would take a nap in the middle of the day. I now recognize this as the TX timeout.
I swan as in "Well, I swan!" I remember asking my mother what this meant about 20 years ago at a family gathering and she didn't remember the phrase which was unbelievable to me because she said it all the time when I was a child. My older sister said she remembered her saying it, too. I gave it a lot of thought after that and finally came to the conclusion it had to be the "christian" version of "Well, I swear!"
Stickers as in "Watch out for that sticker patch, Bud!" We were quite adept at avoiding stickers, or goat head thorns, when going about normal activities but when running, you would frequently hear, "OW, OW, OW, OW, OW!" and see the injured party hopping from one foot to the other before plopping down to remove the stickers from the soles of his/her feet because we were always barefoot in TX when we were kids. Another thing high on my list of what I miss is walking barefoot in the hot TX desert and seeing the alkali dust puff up between my toes.
Yonder as in "He's over yonder by the fence." I remember a woman in CA making me feel something akin to shame when I used that word in response to her question as to the whereabouts of her daughter. I pointed in the direction of a group of kids and said, "Over yonder." She physically recoiled and asked in a pinched voice, "Where are you from?" When I replied, "Texas", she sniffed, "I thought so!" and hurried off to retrieve her daughter. I vowed at the tender age of nine never to use that word again; thankfully, I grew up and dismissed that type of prejudice for the ignorance that it was.
And, of course, the, by now, universally known
Y'all as in "Y'all want to sit for a spell, have a glass of ice tea and share some of your childhood colloquialisms with this old piss ant?"