Not the Boss of Me

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Willow Broadus and I live in Rochester, Vermont.

Welcome.

The other day I was having a discussion with a family member about an unusual phrase that kids seem to learn when they get to kindergarten. The phrase is, you’re not the boss of me.

She swore that they don’t say it in New York. And so I was saying, well, is this just a Vermont thing because I’ve been hearing kids when they get to kindergarten for years just saying it and it’s always with that exact same phraseology you know you’re not the boss of me as opposed to saying you’re not my boss or something like that. With some force right with some you’re not the boss of me. Exactly with some force.

So are you a kindergarten teacher? I’m not I used to teach preschool and camp and so I’ve been hearing them see this for more than a decade. I’m a mom of a six-year-old so when he started saying it I was like what’s going on where does this come from and is it from bug with bunny or what and Willow are they saying it to each other are they saying it to an authority figure generally to each other yeah definitely not to their teachers.

I see. You’re not the boss of me.

It is a weird construction.

Yeah. Well, let’s just dispense with one of your theories right away, though. It doesn’t belong to Vermont in particular. It’s widespread throughout North America.

A colleague of ours, Ben Zimmer, who is a language columnist, has done some digging on this term and has discovered that it goes back at least to 1883, where he found it in a comic, an old comic. And it’s out of the mouth of children. And he’s done some digging over the years, and we find again and again that it kind of keeps happening.

And I believe what’s happened, it is turned into folklore. And it’s folklore that belongs to children. And it’s one of my favorite topics. So it is transmitted from child to child and does not require the interference of adults in order for that you’re not the boss of me to make its way to the new generation of children every single time they encounter other children who are being bossy.

And that bossiness, that idea of somebody else not controlling them, as you know, as the parent of a six-year-old, is so important to these children as they’re expressing identity, individuality, they’re trying to amass as much power as they can.

They’re little dictators, frankly, and they want to take over everything. And that is a way that they challenge the authority of other people whose authority they don’t recognize.

And that particular form of locution, you’re not the boss of me, it’s not really, I don’t think it’s because it’s a childish syntax. I think that is simply idiomatic and is the way that it’s been transmitted in that form. And you’re not my boss doesn’t have that same oomph and force that you’re not the boss of me has. It almost has a Yiddish sound to it.

You think it does? You’re not the boss of me. You’re not the boss of me.

Well, we do allow of to serve as a preposition denoting possession or control, right? We can either say Sarah is Mike’s boss or Sarah is the boss of Mike. Either one works. But usually the possessive is the more sophisticated and kind of sleek way of doing it.

I can’t believe it goes back so far. That’s amazing.

Well, again, the folklore. I’ve mentioned this couple on the show before. If you want to read a lot more about the folklore of children, Iona and Peter Opie, O-P-I-E, have a book called The Folklore of Children. I believe that’s the title. And they’ve written a number of different books about the games children play. And they talk about this particular oddity of this culture that’s transmitted only between children doesn’t require adults.

That’s amazing.

So there you go, Willow. That’s it. That’s the story.

Thank you so much. Have a good one. Bye-bye.

You too. Bye-bye. Bye.

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