<p>Lol, D can’t even tell time in analog. She refuses to wear a watch, using her cell phone for the time. Once on vacation we passed the “eager beaver car wash”. I was in stitches and had to explain to D (then 15) which led to a discussion about the pervasive use of slang with reference to (particularly female) body parts. </p>
<p>When we lived with my grandmother she had a party line (if you never had one, it’s a phone line shared with someone else). She used to get so mad because the other party was some woman who would talk a lot at all hours with her friends. G-ma would want to make a call, pick up the phone, and “neighbor” would be chatting away. For hours. So funny now to think that we could have just dropped in on their conversation.</p>
<p>One of my hobbies is researching the family genealogies, and the kids find it funny that long before Facebook, people announced their activities in little blurbs in the newspaper (and this goes back before most of us were even born :)) e.g.: “Mr. and Mrs. James Hocken will be vacationing in Bermuda next week.” “Martha Jones hosted the ladies of the Floral Society at her home for tea Saturday. Cheesecake was served.”</p>
<p>^ growing up when I stayed for a weekend with my great aunt and uncle at their farm it would be mentioned in their small rural community newspaper. It always made me feel like a princess! Oh and they had a party line,too…</p>
<p>"When we lived with my grandmother she had a party line (if you never had one, it’s a phone line shared with someone else). "</p>
<p>==========</p>
<p>My grandparents had one, too. </p>
<p>When the movie, “Pillow Talk” was on, I had to explain to my kids what a party line was. They were shocked that you could actually hear another’s convo. </p>
<p>My kids were also surprised to hear that when we were growing up there were “Milk Men” and “Bread Men” that delivered to your door.</p>
<p>…I think all those mimeos were shown on a mysterious machine called an “overhead projector?”</p>
<p>That’s one for the hoi polloi. I will show my age and stick with the “swells” - these words came up while watching a) Jimmy Durante and 2) Fred Astaire - whose picture may be be found in the Easter Parade in the “rotogravure” (now for that one I had to ask my mom!)</p>
<p>I was having a “discussion” with older DD and my younger one decided to add her two cents. I turned to her and said “Look, I don’t need any comments from the peanut gallery.” Both my girls got confused looks on their faces and started giggling. The “discussion” was sidetracked while I tried to explain the phrase peanut gallery and how it related to the situation.</p>
<p>I" will show my age and stick with the “swells” - these words came up while watching a) Jimmy Durante and 2) Fred Astaire - whose picture may be be found in the Easter Parade "</p>
<p>lol…“We’re a couple of swells…” Love that movie!</p>
<p>With all the publicity surrounding the growing popularity of these mobile “steet faire” food trucks and with all the young people wired in to know where they’ll be at all times…I tell my kids that “back in the day,” we called them “roach coaches”. They weren’t amused.</p>
<p>When my dad wanted us to get going in a hurry, he would say, “We need to light a shuck!” I have no idea where that comes from!</p>
<p>MTA: I just Googled it:</p>
<p>What do Western novelists mean by “light a shuck?”</p>
<p>The phrase means to depart in haste for another location, especially in the dead of night. It is derived from the use of corn shucks as convenient torches for lighting the way home.</p>
<p>Dragonmom, as a retired 5th grade teacher, I loved your story!! In fact, I’ve already texted it to several of my colleagues who are working today.</p>
<p>My mother always used “give it a lick and a promise”, but I thought it was a local colloquialism. Maybe I’ll use it more frequently now, because there are so many times when that phrase is appropriate, like every time I clean. LOL</p>
<p>I’ve used, “I’m going to fry the bacon while the pans hot,” so many times that my kids know what it means.</p>
<p>Anyone use, “Are those rocks being thrown in my garden?”</p>
<p>I teach computer science and last week I was talking about “dope vectors” (which are found in some compilers and hold information about something else). I had to explain the phrase “give me the dope on that”.</p>
<p>I recently watched a movie that I thought a friends daughter (HS JR) would love. I sent her a message saying that “I just watched a movie that has your name written all over it” suggesting if she hasn’t seen it she should. She sent me a message back that she has seen the movie several times but doesn’t remember ever hearing her name in it.</p>
<p>^^You are correct. Transparencies are used on overheads (our school just stopped using them last year). Mimeos are the same as dittos; paper with ink pressed on it.</p>
<p>How about shooting fish in a barrel? I hope these sayings don’t disappear. Our language would be poorer without them.</p>
<p>I’m a Star Trek fan (no, not a rabid one) and was explaining to my daughter how they killed the original series by moving it to Friday when all the kids were out. She looked confused and asked, “Well, why didn’t you just tape it?” Um . . . (Of course, even that’s now outdated - it’s “Why didn’t you DVR [or Tivo] it”?)</p>
<p>But we still use some words that don’t make sense anymore. We still “dial” the phone; we get a “dial tone”, but when’s the last time anyone used a phone with a dial? Or the old TV admonition - “Don’t touch that dial!”</p>
<p>Just the other day, I told someone that I was busy as a one-armed paper hanger. Although she understood it, she’d never heard it before.</p>
<p>Our DS2 had a sociology assignment and he had to get 3 people 2 generations to give a term of a type of social group in society when they were 17.</p>
<p>My Mom who is 75 said hobos.
Sister said DINKS
Bullet and I said at the exact same time: ginkers</p>
<p>He got the hobos, but not the other 2.</p>
<p>We explained DINKS = Dual Income No Kids. Still went over his head. He looked at us and said, why was this popular, everybody who gets married waits to have kids, so they are all DINKs. We had to explain to him that back in the late 70’s, early 80’s most people got married and popped a baby out within a couple of yrs., now it is common to have children much later in life, but back at that time, they were called DINKS.</p>
<p>Ginkers made him strain his brain. You could see him thinking very hard, what on earth could be a ginker? We told him, those were the kids, that hung out at the back of the HS, smoking cigarettes, wearing wallets on a chain and typically not the kid in any AP class. Lightbulb went on with that description.</p>
<p>The one thing that I do is not a saying, but on those lines, my MIL pounded this in my head 23 yrs ago. It is bad luck to place new shoes or high heels on a counter. One time when I came home from shopping with DD and she placed the shoes on the counter I told her get them off now. I had to explain why to her.</p>
<p>Did anyone ever use a mimeograph machine? I had to use one a few times at college while working. </p>
<p>I remember in 4th grade making Christmas wreaths out of punch cards, folding them into cones, stapling them together, forming them into a wreath and spray painting them. Had no idea at the time what their real use was. Years later I would hear stories about how awful it was if something happened to your box of punch cards and they would get out of order. </p>
<p>My grandfather (born 1895) loved to tell this joke, “Put the candle to bed and blow yourself out.”</p>
Reminds me of a joke we tell about how things come about:</p>
<p>A mother was teaching her daughter to cook a pot roast. She cut off both ends of the roast and put it into the pan.</p>
<p>“Momma, why do you cut off the ends?”
“Because that’s the way my mother taught me.”</p>
<p>The girl goes to Grandma and asks, “Grandma, why do you cut the ends off the roast?”
Grandma says, “Because that’s the way my mother taught me.”</p>
<p>The girl goes to Great-Grandma and asks, “Great-Grandma, why do you cut the ends off the roast?”
Great-Grandma looks up and says, “Because I didn’t own a pot big enough!”</p>