Not My Pig, Not My Farm

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Jesse from Fort Worth, Texas.

Hello, Jesse. Welcome.

Hi, Jesse. Welcome to the program.

Well, I had emailed in with a saying that I picked up a while back. I don’t even really know where I heard it from. It was, not my pig, not my farm. That’s another way of saying, you know, not my problem or, you know, I don’t want to get involved or keep me out of this or whatever.

Right. I don’t have a dog in that fight or a horse in that race, that sort of thing.

Yeah, basically.

Huh.

And where have you been hearing this?

Well, you know, honestly, I don’t even remember where in the world I heard it the first time, and I remember hearing it, and I thought it was really funny. I said it a couple of times, not my pig, not my farm, and, you know, just kind of varied it a little bit. I have a good friend that’s a big hunter, and we spun it for him saying, not my deer, not my leaf. People that like cats, you know, not my cat, not my box. And so we’ve done it.

I like that one, not my cat, not my box.

Yeah, not my dog, not my yard, not my dog, not my hunt, whatever, pick it. Not my duck, not my pond.

Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, sometimes it doesn’t roll off all the way. So we just kind of shorten it as not my pig. So that’s pretty much all we’ve said for a couple of years now. I just say, well, something happens or comes up and we say, well, not my pig.

And so, Jesse, you travel a lot, I gather, then? You might have heard this anywhere.

I have traveled in the past a lot. I haven’t so much recently, but I have.

Did you ever read the Douglas Adams books, the Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy trilogy?

I did not. No, I haven’t heard of that.

He makes all this funny science fiction stuff in there, and one of the things he comes up with is the idea that there’s something called an SEP field, which is a somebody else’s problem field that surrounds things that people don’t want to deal with. Like you can land a rocket ship right in the middle of a soccer match, and nobody will notice it because it’s not their problem.

Yeah, okay, that makes sense.

I know the concept. He was great that way. He’s well missed, and the books are still worth a laugh. But I don’t know anything about the history of not my pig, not my farm.

Well, it’s not your pig.

It’s not my pig, really.

Well, I’ve Googled it, too.

Not my word, not my dictionary. I’ve Googled it, too, and cannot find really where it originated. I can’t even find where I heard it from. Like I said, I just heard it somewhere a few years ago. I can’t remember where, and it just struck me really funny. I love it.

I think this is a great candidate to put the call out and ask our other listeners to let us know if they know a specific case of this word being used, say, in the last few decades or even earlier. Is it a book or a movie or do they see it on a television show, find it in a magazine article? Maybe we can get a little bit of history on this concept.

Yeah, because clearly it’s not just you and your friends. I’m looking online right now and there are plenty of examples of it.

But nothing meaty, right?

Nothing really substantial where we can kind of get a hook in it and say, okay, let’s follow this as far as it goes. And I love the construct. I mean, you could play with that all day.

Not my cheddar, not my cheese ball.

Yeah, not my fish, not my tank, not my bird, not my cage.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I’m liking this. I’m liking this.

Not my baby, not my marriage.

No, wait. That doesn’t work. I think I get some of the other things. Not my wife.

Oh, wait. Sorry, honey.

Jesse, thanks for calling today. If we come up with anything new, we’ll send it along, all right?

Very good.

Thank you.

Take care.

Okay, thanks.

Bye-bye.

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