Early in life, I learned that adults had their own language. They spoke English, but it was interspersed with phrases that had been handed down for so long that for the most part, no one really knew their original or real meaning.

My parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and any other old person (over age 20) could say a great deal with a few words.

Sometimes it was advice. Sometimes it was a warning. Occasionally it was a warning disguised as advice, which was the kind you paid closest attention to.

“Don’t get too big for your britches” was one of the first I remember. Other than overindulging in Twinkies, I had no idea how someone could get too big for his britches. Mine were already too big in the waist and too short in the legs. But I knew the phrase meant I had started acting like I knew something the grown-ups did not. In our house, that was a position best held quietly.

“Were you born in a barn?” was another one. It was usually asked when somebody left the door open.

No person in the family had been born in a barn (although I had my suspicions about one of the cousins), and I do not believe a barn was under serious consideration. It simply meant close the door. Heat and air-conditioning were not supposed to be shared with the whole neighborhood.

Then there was the champion of all childhood discussions: “Because I said so.” A child could ask why he had to eat his vegetables, come in before dark, or quit running through the house. The answer did not change. “Because I said so.”

All kids on Beech Street in Ashdown, Arkansas, thought that “Because I said so,” meant the adult had run out of reasons. Now I know that it meant that adults had neither the time nor the interest in preparing a legal brief for a ten-year-old. It was less an explanation than a closing argument.

Then there’s, “I’ll give you something to cry about.” My personal favorite.

It never made sense to offer a reason to cry to someone who already had found a reason to cry. Why would you need another reason? Especially from the person who was completely in charge of whether you cried or not. It really meant that the crying had gone on long enough for everybody in the room to appreciate the performance. So, stop already.

My mom made banana pudding in a green glass bowl. We knew it was going to be banana pudding because that was the only thing she ever made in that bowl. But the reason for the banana pudding varied.

She might make it for us, for church, or as a peacemaker. If there was a small rift between two people she knew, the pudding served as a meringued medium. A détente dessert, if you will. It’s hard to stay mad at someone when you’re together eating banana pudding.

That was when somebody might say, “You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar.” I never saw anybody catch a fly with either one, but the point was clear. Unhappy people were happified through banana pudding in a green, glass bowl.

From the kitchen we now go to the aft section of a Buick.

My sister and I could turn the back seat of a car into a small international incident. Mom sometimes assigned us separate sides of the car, in the same way that a boxing referee pushes two pugilists apart into their own corners.

If the trouble continued, we’d hear, “Don’t make me come back there.”

That was not a threat to abandon operating the motor vehicle and join us in the back; it meant that she could discipline us both while continuing to drive.

If I protested about having to do a particularly unpleasant chore, my dad would remind me, “You are the low man on the totem pole.” It meant that because I was the kid, I was taking out the trash.

This phrase became ironic when I later discovered that totem-pole figures are not always arranged low-to-high. In other words, in some tribes, the person at the bottom of the pole was considered the most important person of the group. But when you were standing by the garbage can, it did, in fact, mean exactly what dad said it meant.

“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all,” was difficult to follow. It also seemed to contradict, “Because I said so,” which is a curt and unpleasant response.

The older I get, the more I understand that those phrases were not just shortcuts for grown-ups. They were a way of passing along common sense, respect, thrift, and responsibility.

As it turned out, the proof was in the pudding.

 

©2026 John Moore

John has a new book. ”Write of Passage: Volume 3” is available on Amazon. You can write to him at TheCountryWriter.com.