Not counting camping as a kid, my first camping experience was in a tent in TN with my late husband and then 8 year old daughter. It rained every day...till two hours before it was time to leave. Two hair dryers would have been nice...as would a dry trailer. LOL!
Now for the interesting product...not everyone wants a handheld GPS but would like an easy way to get back to camp when hiking, find a car in a parking lot, etc. Here is an easy to use $50 solution (although there is a newer one for $68).
Now to the memories....Stu and I were talking at dinner about things our parents used to say to us to get us to clean our plates. I was told about the starving children in China. Stu was told about the people starving in Armenia...no idea where that came from.GPS made simple!
BackTrack utilizes GPS technology in its most basic format, BackTrack has only two buttons and stores up to three locations – just mark it and forget it until it’s time to return. At the end of the day, select your location and the BackTrack displays direction and distance to travel. Use it to find your car in a crowded parking lot, your treestand or the trailhead, even to rendezvous with your group. It’s extremely compact and stows conveniently in your pocket, pack or purse.
That got me to thinking about those phrases, some we ended up saying to our kids even though we swore we wouldn't. Others went the way of the older generation. My mother used to always tell us to "Put your wants in the Boston Globe". Another was 'If wishes were horses all beggars would ride".
I know most of us heard "Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about". LOL! Then there was the "Don't make me tell your father...". Except in my house my mother was the disciplinarian and since Stu's dad was career Navy, so was his mom. Then there was "Close th door, were you raised in a barn?"
My brothers loved to lean back onto the rear legs of the dining room chairs and they heard "If God meant you to do that he'd have made chairs with two legs".
I'm sure we've all heard, "If I've told you once ... I've told you a thousand times"...and many of us probably said it to our kids. LOL!
So, what are your childhood memory sayings?
Till next time - keep on rollin',
Donna and Stu
Stu and Donna
My father always said, "you get more with honey than you do with vinegar" and I was also of the "Armenia" generation.
ReplyDeleteIn my young years my Mother often referred to me as a 'chip off the old block' in reference to my Dad. My Mother hated my Dad & they were bitterly divorced when I was about 6. Took me many, many years to even begin to understand all that.......
ReplyDeleteWe both heard about Armenian children, although Suzy never had any problems cleaning her plate (I didn't have much problem that way either, except for a few foods). Suzy's family were restaurant and donut shop people, and she was usually urged to eat more! She also remembers hearing a constant symphony of "Don't do that, you'll hurt yourself!" It took me years to help her rebuild her personal confidence level.
ReplyDeleteSame ones Donna, "if you don't stop crying, I will give you something to cry about." We three siblings were never required to clean our plates, my friend back in MT credits that rule in her growing up to her weight problem all her life. I too rarely heard the "just wait until I tell your father" cause Mom was the boss!
ReplyDelete"Your face is going to freeze that way someday."
ReplyDelete"Clean your plate, children are starving in Europe." I wanted to package up my leftovers and send them to the kids in Europe.
Both my parents had so many sayings but "for the life of me" I can't remember them right now.
"Make sure you wash both sets of your cheeks everyday!" :)
ReplyDeleteWhen I saw that a butt-whooping had become inevitable I'd say "I'll be good!" and my mother said "You bet your bottom dollar you will be!"
ReplyDeleteYou make a better door than a window (when I was standing in front of the TV).
If wishes were fishes we'd eat 'till we died.
If horse turds were horses we'd all take a ride.
I was told to be good or I would go to a home for bad kids.....Wow, and I actually grew up sane...
ReplyDeleteFunny stuff on the link...a recent survey done by RVtravel.com shows that 25% of the RVer's in a the survey had called for pizza delivery to their campsite...
I'm like Sandra. It was the European children that were starving! lol!
ReplyDelete"If xxx jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?"
"Always wear clean underwear. You never know when you might be in a accident!"
"If you swallow that gum, you'll get appendicitis"
"People in hell want ice water too!"
My mothers favorite was "I hope you have a child just like yourself some day!" And I did! lol
My least favorite of all, from my father who ruled with an iron fist, "Children should be seen and not heard".
OK, guess I've gone off on a tangent-sorry!
"If you play with fire, you'll wet the bed."
ReplyDelete"Keep up that cryin' and I'll give you something to cry about".
"They don't let you pull a U-Haul with you to the cemetery"
"If I have to come in there, heads will roll!"
"Eat your bread crusts, it makes you cheeks rosey"...my grandma...
Adn then there was always the one about money not growing on trees.
ReplyDeleteMy parent's were pretty simple. If I didn't eat enough then I was told either what a waste of good food and money it was or I wasn't going to get dessert later. Being a sugarholic that worked.
ReplyDeleteAs for the butt whomping, dad was the killer so when mom said "When your dad gets home your gonna get it", that usually worked.
One quote that shakes my knees to this day is this. We would go to my dad's office after school and then ride home with him. So if he called us into his office and told us "Close the door, we need to talk" we knew we were in BIG trouble. I still to this day hate getting called into my boss's office and told that.
What lessons in logic. Really, what impact does cleaning your plate have on whether or not children in a distant land have enough to eat?
ReplyDeleteThe positive message in all of this is that children are tough enough to survive childhood, in spite of the good or bad intentions of parents. Most of us turn out well enough, and we generally don't screw up our kids too much.
"If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."
"What will the neighbors think?" was the theme of my mother's life. She truly believed that how things look are more important than how they are. I've made some bad mistakes in my life following that guideline.
ReplyDelete"if you leave your lip stuck out like that (when pouting) a bird is gonna come along and poop on it" is the one I remember the most...
ReplyDeleteand for me there were starving children all over the world!
since my siblings were 14 and 10 years older than me, I also heard "your brother and sister never did that!". well, of course they didn't!! they grew up in the 40's and 50's and I was a child of the 60's!!!!!
Oh no - tent camping. Our first time out with our young daughter and a very large dog, it rained and rained. A muddy site on the banks of the St. Joe River in MI, I remember my husband trying to cook over a fire. I think he was afraid we may starve or wash down the river. We stayed one night then ended up in a small motel. I don't remember packing up, but I'm sure we dragged home a wet, muddy tent.
ReplyDeleteDid you ever "catch your Death a cold"? How about, "I may not always be right, but I am never wrong!"?
ReplyDeleteWe, too, heard about the starving children of China, Armenia, Mexico and Africa. We were also exhorted to clean our plates. Any wonder I am obese now?
My mother, a slight woman, was not prone to jumping to conclusions. Approached by a crying youngster, the usual response was questions regarding puddles of blood, bones broken and comas endured. If all answers were to the negative, the hockey stick would come out (she was raised Canadian) and she'd give said child something to cry about. Such as it was in a 3 boy household, only a year or two between us.
How about your Mother's coping mechanism when you swore? I can identify, Ivory soap, Dial, Lifebuoy and Dove Beauty Bar by taste alone. There IS a difference between Tabasco and Red Hot sauce, by the way (Red Hot isn't as hot). My father, away on business during the week, would cook on Sundays. Inquiries as to what he was cooking would elicit, "I think we'll have Roast Leg o' Willie!" If I got to be too much underfoot in the kitchen, I would be sure to hear "Into ze oven mit you, kinderplatz."
And yes, I found myself using very similar phrases when raising my own kids...
Definitely been some great comments...and several were ones that were familiar to me as well. Thanks for sharing!!!
ReplyDeleteSomebody else mentioned this but in my family "children should be seen and not heard" was popular when I was growing up.
ReplyDeleteIn England, during the war, the law said we could not have more than 5" of bath water, because "the children in Russia will starve".
ReplyDeleteNever figured out how that worked!
But everyone had 5" mark painted on their tubs.
"If you don't eat your crusts, your hair won't curl."
"If you keep on making that face, and the wind changes, it will stay that way"
I believe we all came from the same parents since my parents said almost all the ones already mentioned! One I have used more currently though is "Would you like cheese with that 'whine'?"
ReplyDeleteGreat post! Love reading your writing!
Blessings, K
http://seashellsandoveralls.blogspot.com
WOW Now I gotta go way back to remember all these! My Scottish Grandpa's was the crust makes your hair curl thing. My mom was the starving Armenians. My dad was if everyone jumped of the end of a bridge would you do it too? MINE was I'm never gonna say (do) such and such to MY KIDS! LMAO That one never worked either. It flew out before I could catch it and stuff it back down my throat! This was fun Donna! THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES!
ReplyDelete(my Grandpa sold newspapers with Bob Hope in Cleveland as a child - he was always a fav of mine!)
We had an Armenian family in the house across the street. So once in a while I offered to take my supper over to them. Boy, that was good to get myself slapped!!!
ReplyDeleteWhy did they pick Armenia to be the under privileged country? I know they ceased to exist after WWII, but was it really poor before that?
It must have been common knowledge in our folks generation!
Nothing rings a bell for "sayings", but I am distinctly reminded of our family camping trips where I had a sneaking suspicion that our car camping at a campground with a movie theater was a bit different than my Boy Scout friends' ideas of camping. I'm thrilled that RVing lets me backpack wherever I'd like.
ReplyDeleteKevin's Mom told us that her mother used to tell her to eat her peas, but she didn't like peas and her mother would say there are starving children in India that would be happy to have your peas, Kevin's Mom's reply to that was "Then send the peas to them!" I always got a laugh out of that one.
ReplyDeleteKevin and Ruth
www.travelwithkevinandruth.com
My Nana would always ask us our current age, and then inquire if we wanted to live to see the next age?!! When I went back to visit her as an adult, she was still using the same line with her great grandchildren!!! Cracked me up!!!!
ReplyDelete