Why Would You Say That?

I am always amazed to see how often people say things without really thinking about what they are saying. I remember the first time I heard some expressions come out of my mother’s mouth and being stumped to figure out why she would say something so dumb.

The family was at the kitchen table and my Mom was finishing preparing the meal when my Aunt Rita called. The phone was on the wall across from where she was standing near the stove, but my father had replaced the cord to the handset with a longer one so that she would not be forced to stand by the phone while talking.

It was then that I heard her say two things to my aunt that put a scowl on my face in disbelief. My ‘scowl’ was when my eyes squinted and my mouth puckered like they were trying to squash my nose between them.

She said, “Yes; I found them. I was beside myself. I looked all over the damned house and guess what; I found them in the last place I looked…”.

I knew that she was talking about the rings she wore because she had been looking for them all day and found them just before my father came home from work. She had spoken to my aunt earlier in the day and had to cut their phone conversation short so that she could continue looking for her lost jewelry.

My father always noticed when I was pondering something by the look on my face. When he asked me what I was thinking, I told him straight out that Mom had said two things so stupid that it hurt my brain. I was 8, but I knew “stupid” when I heard it. He then asked me what she said and I told him.

“She just told Aunt Rita that she was beside herself! How can she be ‘beside’ herself; there’s only one of her?”

My Dad responded,” It’s just an expression, Tommy; it means she was ‘shocked’ or ‘emotional’.”

“Who made that one up? Why couldn’t she be in front of herself or behind herself? Why couldn’t she just say she was ‘shocked’?”

My father just shrugged his shoulders and said he really didn’t know where the expression came from. I had to continue, though, because her second statement really bugged me. As I did, she had already hung up the phone and was placing the meal on the table.

“Then she said that she found her rings in the ‘last place she looked’! That’s dumb!”

My mother then sternly interjected,” Buster, I’m going to smack this kid; he’s always correcting what I say and calling it ‘stupid’.” (Buster was the nickname my uncles had given him when he was seven years old.)

He replied,” Now hold on. I want to hear what he has to say… Why is that dumb?”

“Well, think about it; you ALWAYS find what you’re looking for in the last place you look. When you find it, you STOP looking! Mom, did you ever find something in the second-to-the-last place you looked? Even if you find it in the first place you look, it’s the last place you looked!”

With this, my Father could not contain his amusement and burst out laughing.  He said he never thought about that expression before, but what I was saying made perfect sense. His reaction angered my mother. She told him he was encouraging me to be disrespectful to her.

My father clarified the situation by saying that I wasn’t disrespecting her, but analyzing common expressions. I then added that I was going to get her a Saint Anthony medal for Christmas so that he could find her lost things for her. She responded to me by saying that, when I was asleep that night, she was going to take away my Saint Christopher medal so the next time I got lost I couldn’t find my way home again.

The next day, I was sitting at the kitchen table doing my homework when the phone rang. It was my mother’s cousin, Minnie from Trenton. They were talking for several minutes when my father arrived from work and my mother said her good-byes and hung up.

My Mom told my father that Minnie’s daughter had met a young man who had ‘fallen head over heels’ for her.

Hearing this, I palmed myself on the forehead and let out muffled ‘Jeez!’.

“What?”, my father asked.

“I said,”…fallen head over heels…” shaking my head.

“Now, what’s wrong with that?”, my Mom asked.

“Mom, your head is ALWAYS over your heels. You could be sitting or standing and your head is over your heels. If you fall on your stomach or on your back, your head is even with your heels. The only time you can have your head under your heels is if you’re walking on your hands or hanging upside down!”

My father smiled and left the kitchen. My mother sneered at me and went to the stove, telling me to get lost because she had to set the table.

These were not the last times that I heard people blurt out expressions that made little sense upon analysis. What still stuns me to this day is that it doesn’t stop with expressions alone.

Most of what people think and say regarding their beliefs also fall into the category of unexamined ideas and notions. Their origins very rarely begin with the person uttering them – left-wing politics and what passes for ‘socialist political intellectualism’ should immediately ring a bell. The fun comes when you state a fact, relate an historical event or demonstrate an idea that shakes their dogma. They tremble and mumble and go on thinking as they did before.

I don’t get nearly as frustrated as I once did when I was younger; I merely smile, raise my eyebrows and head for the nearest exit. I enjoy watching them live in denial of reality, which is why I wholeheartedly encourage every democrat I know to waste their parent’s money on the loser’s book. She could have at least added a question mark to the title, though.

After all, isn’t placing the blame for one’s failures on everyone and everything else the bedrock foundation of “social justice”?