My younger brother would do better than me with this prompt. Like so many youngest children, he is an astute observer of his mother, and he can accurately impersonate/roast her at a moment’s notice.
(Zoe can do the same thing with me!)
When my mom does something thoughtless (like turning the oven on when a plastic bowl of bread dough is rising inside), she either says, “Oh, CRUD.” or, “Ohhh, stu-PID-ity!”
Sometimes when sibling arguing escalated at home, she would say, “What would the neighbors think?”
Sometimes when I or my siblings would ask, “If we do This Thing You Have Told Us We Are Not Supposed To Do, what will happen?”, she would say, “Try it and see.”
In the days when she woke my sister and me up in the morning, she would say, “Rise and shine!” or, “Up and at ’em!”
(For many, many years, I thought she was saying, “Up and Adam”, which I thought was some kind of obscure reference to the biblical Adam!)
But if I think of something that’s actually a favorite thing to say, this quote comes to mind, an excerpt from a poem by C.T. Studd:
Only one life,’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.
“Kill ’em with kindness.” And my mother’s good morning one was: “Good morning, Mary Sunshine.” But later in life, I wondered if it might be instead, “Good morning, merry sunshine.”
My mom was infamous in our family for messing up cliches. “Better than sliced popcorn,” was one of the more memorable ones.
Oddly, despite being the youngest child and highly attuned to language, I don’t really remember any other favorite sayings from my mom. Possibly she just isn’t a repeating kind of person? Dunno.
I’ve been racking my brain but I can’t seem to think of one. When I was a child I mostly remember my mother yelling a lot and that it would turn into extra long lectures. Even now I can’t think of anything that she says with any regularity. I know I heard a lot of “You’re so smart, why do you waste it?” when I was a kid (which is strange because I never exactly got into trouble or anything, I was just a bit of a slacker.)
My father is far more quotable.
Does anyone else’s mom say “ya” while breathing in? It typically happens in small talk conversation like when you run into someone in a grocery store, let’s say.
Hi Jenni, My Mom doesn’t do this, but several of my relatives in Finland do that same exact thing. They are Swedish-speaking Finns, so maybe it’s a Swedish language thing (?) Is she from the upper Midwest? Many Swedish speakers moved there when they came to the US. Just a theory. 🙂
At the end of laughing my mom would say oh shoot!
“If you watch the dimes the dollars take care of themselves.” was my first and frequent lesson in frugality. We were very poor but my Mom never said “We can’t afford it.” She always said “Let’s see what we can do about it.”
Our mom (6 kids) used to say “I wonder what the neighbors are eating?” after making a somewhat expensive meal that was delicious. She was a very good cook. The other, less favorite quote was “go get me my hairbrush”. It was used as a corrective influencer of behavior, not for brushing your hair. I can’t remember a time any of us complied with that order. More like, run outside and play real quick.
I have never heard that youngest children are astute observers of their mothers, but it makes total sense. Our youngest (boy) is so attentive to me and very concerned and watchful over me. Actually, our two youngest (both boys) are both that way. Our older two are girls. Them? Not so much! LOL!
My mom always says “Mmm…bye now” when she hangs up the phone. And she also said “Good grief” a lot! I’m not sure what my kids would say about me though I’m sure they have a list. LOL!
“Oh crud” is one of my mom’s, too. 🙂
When something frustrated her my mother would say, “For this I came to America?” It applied to rude salespeople, appliances that broke down, report cards with less than sterling grades, or misbehaviors. I was the oldest so the one who got in trouble the most and she would put her hands on her hips and say, “You ripped your dress? For this I came to America?” It made no sense, then or now, but my father had a slightly different version, so maybe it is a refugee thing. Neither one ever spoke English to us, so this was also said in Lithuanian, where is sounds equally weird. And it was so common a phrase that my siblings and I use it as a joke to each other. “You have not called me in three weeks. For this I came to America?”
These quotes are making me laugh. Moms are funny.
My mother had sooo many sayings! She was always coming up with some obscure thing or other. Sometimes they just pop out of my mouth and my wife just looks at me, like “Where did that come from?? Let me guess, your mum?”
Her exclamation was “Mercy Maud!”, and her lament was “Oh deary me.” One of my favourites was “Don’t eat that, Elmo, that ain’t hay”. When she became very repetitive as her Alzheimer’s developed in her last years, she used to say often, “It wasn’t the cough that carried her off, it was the coffin they carried her off in”. My mother wan’t a noisy person, but I still hear her every day.
“It is what it is.”
“Mama said there’d be days like this.” (always on negative days…)
“I’ve to go outside and get the cobwebs blown out of my head.”
“We shall see.”
“Well, there.”
“There will always be a way.”