Sandwiched
Last week I shared my mother’s “Mom-isms” – sayings that were unique to her that make me laugh to this day. This week I wanted to write about some of my father-in-law’s “Dad Phrases” that my husband still uses.
Where Mom’s phrases were spoken to describe a variety of situations, Ron’s unique words were used specifically when illustrating his sons’ actions. We’ll start with the slower ones and progress from there.
“Quit your lollygagging and get moving!”
Lollygagging is an actual word that I found in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. I still hear people, especially parents, using it today. It means to spend time idly, aimlessly, or foolishly – essentially, to dawdle.
I imagine that Ron didn’t use this phrase a lot with three energetic young sons who were all close in age. But John tells me he said it when he was in a hurry, usually while trying to corral his family into their Ford Fairlane station wagon. Suddenly his normally fast boys would become slow as snails. I remember this scenario well with my own two sons.
“Stop fiddle farting!”
This is apparently one step up from lollygagging. Ron would also utter this phrase when he needed to get his boys moving. Fiddle farting amounted to doing nothing important – essentially the opposite of what you’re supposed to be doing at the moment. It involves more movement than lollygagging but still is slow and frustrating to a parent.
“Are you going to keep fiddle jacking with that thing?”
Going from one “fiddle” phrase to the next, fiddle jacking meant that one of the boys was messing around much longer than necessary with some object, perhaps to make it start working or to put it together. Fiddle jacking at least meant more movement than the previous two phrases, but it still wasn’t pleasing to Ron.
“Quit ram-jamming or someone’s gonna get hurt!”
No, this doesn’t have anything to do with the Ram Jam rock group of the 70s. Ram-jamming is a Ron Original. It’s what you would picture when thinking about three young boys, especially mischievous ones playing outside with a ton of energy. Normally ram-jamming involved a great deal of running around, most likely with long, sharp, pointy objects in hand.
As Ron would typically predict, the end result of ram-jamming usually meant injuries that involved bumps, bruises, abrasions, cuts, or some other result leading to a sudden visit to the doctor’s office or emergency room.
I just hope no one was lollygagging when it was time to make those trips.