Don’t break my plate or saw off my bench just yet is a colorful way of saying I’ll be back. It’s somewhat like the phrase he hung up his spoon, referring to someone who has died. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Don’t Break My Plate or Saw off My Bench”
There’s a folk saying in the South that goes, don’t break my plate or saw off my bench just yet.
And that’s if somebody’s leaving for a while.
You know, they’re leaving home maybe to go off to college or something.
You say, don’t break my plate or saw off my bench just yet.
Oh, so you might, if they had their own one plate that they used for every meal, you’d break it as kind of a final gesture of so long.
Yeah, it reminds me of the expression, someone hung up his spoon, you know, when somebody’s died, they’ve hung up their spoon.
So if you want people to keep your room like it was or whatever, you can say it poetically with don’t break my plate.
That reminds me a little bit, and maybe I’ve talked about it on the show before,
A saying that I encountered years ago, translated from one of the Chinese dialects.
And it translates, I think it was on a T-shirt, translates as,
I fool around, I break my rice bowl, I am nothing.
Ooh.
Because it’s about that basic sustenance that you have to provide to yourself.
The rice bowl being the metaphor for living and staying alive and thriving.
That’s really powerful.
It’s different in tone than what you were saying, but the breaking of dishes reminded me of it.
I like it. I like it.
Well, we would love to hear your sayings and expressions, the weird stuff, the odd stuff, the strange stuff,
The stuff you only heard once but you still think about, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.
