Don’t Piss On My Head & Tell Me It’s Raining
Colorful Southern sayings served up with biscuits & gravy and the secret ingredient is love… and butter. Lots of butter.
In the South, we have some rather colorful sayings passed down to us from our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents that may puzzle the average “outsider”. As a little kid, I really hated to hear most of them, because they amounted to Too Bad, So Sad for the most part. Ah, yes- how many clever ways are there to say No One Cares About the Fact That You Want That? Let us count the ones I can remember.
“Tough titty”, said the kitty, “but the milk’s still good’.
This is the smallest violin in the world playing ‘My Heart Bleeds for You’.
Want in one hand, shit in the other- see which one fills up fastest.
My mother was born in the early 1950’s, one of 8 (yes you read that right, 8) children. I guess by now I’ve pretty much clarified that I am generationally poor, but my mother’s childhood was on a different level of poverty than I’ve ever known. To use another of our colorful expressions, my grandparents and their children didn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. Another similar saying applies here, that they didn’t have two pennies to rub together between the lot of them. Stuck in a constant cycle of having to rob Peter just to pay Paul in order to get by.
Being raised by a baby boomer who was raised by a couple of dirt-poor Southerners who survived The Great Depression was an experience. It was hard to get anything over my Mom, she’d seen or heard it all. Woe is to any of us kids who tried only to be met with the words I was born at night, but not last night or Don’t you piss on my head and tell me it’s raining! Even more despair unto the child who met these formidable words with anything resembling an argument in reply beginning with the words ‘but’ or ‘if’. For example, ‘But Joan’s mom let her stay out that late!’, or ‘If you would just listen to me!’ for that child was no doubt to be met with the conversation finisher If ‘ifs’ & ‘buts’ were candy & nuts, we’d ALL have a Merry Christmas!
Sometimes you may ask for something that you most likely knew wasn’t possible. If you did and it made your parent feel bad for not being able to give you the thing you wanted, you could be met with the dreaded You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip or even worse You can’t turn chicken shit into chicken salad no matter how hard you try. These answers meant the same thing- I can’t give something I don’t have. I always felt bad when something I had asked for prompted this response. I tried to turn this around on my Mom, only once, when without missing a beat I tossed back one of her favorite show-stoppers and voiced the opinion that Can’t Never Could. If looks could kill, I’d have been dead faster than she could get out her reply of You’re barking up the wrong tree. I accepted defeat and lived to see another day.
I will say after all is said and done, I actually like our crazy Southern expressions. I’ve gained an appreciation for them that I didn’t have as a child. Probably because as a child, I was on the opposite end of a lot of them. As an adult, I understand the nuanced meanings more than I ever have. Slowly but surely I’ve become the one repeating old sayings to my kids while they groan loudly. Looking back on the way I used to chastise my Mother for the same thing, wasn’t I just the pot calling the kettle black?
Thanks for reading, y’all- if you enjoyed this article please consider giving me a follow or sharing it with a friend. And remember, the secret ingredient is always LOVE!
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As my father loved to say
Peace, Love, & Woodstock,
-Layla
