Get One’s Habits On

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, hello.

Hello, who’s this?

My name is Robbie. I’m calling from Hunt Hill, Alabama.

Hey, Robbie, welcome to the show.

What can we help you with?

Well, yeah, I was always curious about my mom, the things. And there was one in particular that she would always say. Whenever someone was being, you know, particularly abrasive or mean-spirited or defiant or, you know, stubborn, she would always say she’s got her habits on. And I always thought, what does that mean? And I always thought it meant like a nun putting her garments on or putting her, you know, clothing on. I did. That was my first thought. You know, she’s got her habits on, so I would think about a nun putting her habits on. But whenever she said it, it was always when someone was being mean or, you know, particularly nasty or antagonistic. So I knew it couldn’t be anything to do with a nun. So, and I just, my mother is 90 years old this year, so I thought it was something they might, yes. And I thought it might have been something that they used to say back in the day or, you know, something. And I was just always curious, or did anyone else say it, or was it just a saying of hers, or was it a, you know, a common saying?

Yeah, your guess that it doesn’t have anything to do with nuns is probably spot on. There’s almost no chance it has a thing to do with nuns, even though the word habits is in there. It’s just a different kind of habit. It’s more about a thing that you always do. That kind of habit, not a thing that you wear.

Okay. A really interesting thing is that it does tend to appear mainly from African-American speakers in this country, particularly in the American South, and it comes up in a ton of blues songs.

Oh! Yeah, as far back as the 1930s, Lucille Bogan, who, by the way, has some very naughty lyrics if you Google her, but this is not naughty. She’s got one line that’s something like, bring me another two-bit pint because I got my habits on. I’m going to wreck this giant.

Yeah. And you said her name was Lucy what?

Bogan, B-O-G-A-N. And you’ll find it in Langston Hughes. There’s a story that he wrote in 1950 that he uses it. And Zora Neale Hurston uses it in some of her writing as well. And I can find older uses of it back to at least the 1898. I’m sure it’s older than that, but sometimes it’s hard to really get to the ultimate origin of something. But, again, almost always African-American speakers.

It is. Yeah, that is so great. That’s so cool. It brought a smile to my face. You know, the African-American heritage. Great tradition. A community of people who have the shared language, even if they don’t know that they share it, right?

Yeah, it’s very cool. Yeah, thank you so much for, you know, investigating that for me. I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Sure. You’ll also find it in the lyrics of Bessie Smith, too. So if she’s a blues fan, maybe Bessie was more popular than Lucille Bogan. So maybe that’s more likely where she heard it at least once.

Okay, she’ll love to hear that here, you know, because she used to say it all the time. So that’s great.

Oh, that’s great. Well, thank you so much. That really brightened my day and brought a smile to my heart. Thank you so much.

Robbie, you did the same thing for us. Thank you so much for calling. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Take care now. Bye-bye.

Thank you.

So habits.

Habits, yes. So if you have your habits on, it means that you’re angry or aggressive or aggro or something like that. Although occasionally you can modify to have your habits on. You might say there is a Bessie Smith lyric that is something like having her wanting habits on, meaning she has sexual desire. So you can kind of change it up a little bit. It’s always like you’re kind of reverting to your true self or the true character of you or like this basic, really simple part of you.

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