The father of one of Martha’s friends had all sorts lots of funny sayings, like the one he’d use during a lull in a conversation: “Do you live around here or do you ride a bicycle?” He’d also respond to, “Are you ready to leave?” with “I stay ready, so I don’t have to get ready.” We’re betting that every family has these kinds of goofy, memorable lines. One name for them: Dadisims. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Dadisms”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
I was talking recently with my friend Cindy about some expressions that her father used to use. He came from the Piney Woods of East Texas, and whenever there was a lull in the conversation or he wanted to tweak somebody, he would use these little trademark phrases that probably wouldn’t mean that much to other people, but to his family, it just cracked them up.
One of them was, do you live around here or do you ride a bicycle? I was like, what? What does that even mean? Right? And if they would say, come on, dad, let’s go, let’s get ready. He said, I stay ready so I don’t have to get ready. And they call those expressions memisms because that was his name. His grandson couldn’t pronounce his name. I was thinking that every family has memisms, right? Didn’t you have?
Yeah, my father’s got a thing that he says. He’s 74 now, and he’s got a bunch of these dumb things that he says, and some of them are dadisms.
Dadisms, yeah. It’s, yeah, my hair is wavy. One hair stands up and waves to the other. And any time somebody mentions hair, it cues him to say that. Isn’t that funny? And it’s so corny. And I’m sure I’m developing dadisms, too, for my son. I hesitate to share them here.
I bet you are. Yeah, my dad invariably, anytime our family would gather around and watch the television news, there was always a point in the broadcast where my dad would just look up incredulously and say, people are crazy. People are crazy. And to this day, I can crack up my brothers if I just say, people are crazy. And maybe it doesn’t mean that much to people outside the family, but these trademark phrases, they’re really fraught with something.
Yeah, they’re loaded with this memory, for one thing, right? That reminds you of the character of the person, particularly if they’ve passed. And also they’re kind of like an old song that for you brings back a time and a place and a person. And that’s important, right?
That’s a good way to put it. Yeah. Well, I bet we’re pressing the memory button for a lot of our listeners. We’d love to hear your meme-isms and dad-isms. You can call us at 877-929-9673 or send them to us in email. The address is words@waywordradio.org.
