The View from a Drawbridge

I was talking to a friend. I can’t even remember what we were talking about, but I used the phrase “tail over teakettle.” She had never heard it before.

My mother used that expression all the time, and it occurred to me that I had absolutely no idea where it came from. I just knew it was a colorful way of saying that someone had taken a tumble. The expression always amused me, and it made more sense to me than “head over heels”, because isn’t your head supposed to be over your heels?

Anyway, I did a little digging into all things tail and teakettle, and the best, most detailed etymology for the phrase that I could find was on this website. The explanation therein is interesting, but what particularly intrigued me was that somewhere in my research I discovered that the expression is most commonly used in the Northeastern part of America. Well, my mother was from Connecticut. My friend who hadn’t heard the expression, on the other hand, was from the West Coast. Wow.

That got me thinking about the many colorful turns of phrase my mother used, and why she may have used them. I strongly suspect that she, like many people in my family tree, was an undiagnosed level 1 autistic. And the undiagnosed part comes as absolutely no surprise, because spotting high-masking ASD females was still in its infancy in the 1980’s, so it was unheard of in the 1920’s. Of course, I am not a diagnostic professional, but I have a fairly solid suspicion for dozens of reasons I won’t get into here, other than to grossly oversimplify by saying that it takes one to know one.

I also suspect that her place on the spectrum was relatively close to mine, and if that’s the case, her relationship with words, phrases, quotes, sounds, and particular forms of expression was particularly intense. Her colorful phrases probably provided her with stable, reusable formulas for navigating social situations. Of course, that’s pure speculation on my part.

I do know that she liked to paint word pictures. She enjoyed unexpected juxtapositions, playful metaphors, exaggerations, and absurdities. People loved to listen to her stories. She made people laugh without really trying to. She didn’t set out to be a comedian. She didn’t tell jokes. But she played with language in such an expressive way that the people around her would be delighted.

She also had a unique reservoir from which to draw her colorful vocabulary. She was a first generation American. Her parents came here from Denmark. Her father spoke good English with an accent and was highly educated. She worshipped the ground he walked on. Most of his life, despite his engineering degree, he spent at sea, until he finally operated his own dairy farm. During World War II, though, he volunteered in the Merchant Marines, and unfortunately, he wound up dying at sea.

My mother was born and raised in Connecticut, and she never learned to speak Danish, so her language was also influenced by the New Englanders around her. She was also raised as a Congregationalist, which was a rather conservative religion in conservative New England. New England also held onto a lot of old British expressions longer than the rest of the country did.

Her father encouraged her to read, and she did so, voraciously, her entire life. In her youth, she wouldn’t have had easy access to a library, so she probably often read books that were already as much as 100 years old, which would have included authors such as Dickens, Stevenson, Alcott, Kipling, Twain, perhaps Austen and the Brontës, children’s classics, and adventure stories. She also loved Poor Richard’s Almanack.  I’m sure that’s why some of her expressions sounded delightfully old fashioned.

Expressions I heard her say that she most likely drew from old literature included “I dare say,” “by and by,” “all in good time,”  “six of one, half a dozen of the other,” “make no bones about it,” “not by a long shot,” “in a quandary,” “in a dither,” “beside oneself,” “to my way of thinking,” “for the life of me,” “mark my words,” “be that as it may,” “come what may,” “more’s the pity,” “to each his own,” “for pity’s sake” and “suffice it to say.”

But given her unique background, here are some of the other expressions my mother used to use, and where she most likely got them from:

Old New England/Yankee

• No Great Shakes (No big deal)
• Tail Over Teakettle (taking a tumble)
• Fair to Middling (so so)

Okay, this is the less PC version of Tail Over Teakettle, but you get the idea.

Agricultural/Rural:

• Hold Your Horses (wait)
• Don’t Count Your Chickens Before They’re Hatched (Don’t assume you’ve succeeded too soon)
• Don’t Put the Cart Before the Horse (first things first)
• ‘Til the Cows Come Home (for a long, long time)
• Make Hay While the Sun Shines (take advantage of opportunities)
• Were You Born in a Barn? (shut the door!)

Nautical:

• Ship Shape and Bristol Fashion (neat, and properly made)
• By and Large (generally)
• Three Sheets to the Wind (drunk)
• High and Dry (stranded)
• The Bitter End (right through to the finish)
• Pipe Down (be quiet)
• Taken Aback (surprised)
• Know the Ropes (experienced)
• Cut and Run (leave quickly)
• Hand Over Fist (quickly, like making a lot of fast money)
• Batten Down the Hatches (get ready for trouble)
• All Hands on Deck (everybody step up)
• At Loose Ends (unsettled)
• Steady as She Goes (keep it up)
• On an Even Keel (stable)
• Take the Wind Out of His Sails (deflate his ego)

Old English:

• Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (between a rock and a hard place)
• In High Dudgeon (furious)
• Not Worth a Tinker’s Damn (worthless)
• A Fine Kettle of Fish (a total mess)
• That’s a Fine How-Do-You-Do! (Awkward!)
• Without So Much as a Fare-Thee-Well (without saying goodbye)
• That’s Neither Here Nor There (it doesn’t matter)

Biblical/Minced Words due to Religion:

• Gird Your Loins (get ready)
• For Pete’s Sake (for heaven’s sake)
• The Powers That Be (those in charge)
• By the Skin of Your Teeth (just barely)
• A Thorn in His Side (an irritant)
• The Writing on the Wall (the final judgment)
• The Salt of the Earth (pure of heart)
• A Fly in the Ointment (a problem)
• Reap What You Sow (get what you deserve)
• Nothing New Under the Sun (life keeps repeating itself)
• The Blind Leading the Blind (an incompetent person trying to teach an incompetent person).

I still use a lot of the expressions my mother used. I think of them as this delightful collection that I can rummage through in my verbal attic, because they do paint colorful word pictures, indeed. They’re satisfying and vivid and they are far from ordinary. Unfortunately, coming from someone of my generation, these phrases often sound quaint. My mother’s was probably the last generation that could get away with many of them without her speech seeming forced or contrived.

Having said that, though, she gave me something even more valuable than a pile of pithy phrases to stuff amongst the rest of my verbal clutter. She somehow gave me her ability to know what to pull out of it. She gave me the pure joy of rooting around in there and finding the most colorful, unexpected, unique way of describing something that would otherwise seem lifeless and unremarkable. Who cares if the dust occasionally makes me sneeze? What fun!

Thanks, Ma.