So Mad I Could Spit Nickels

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hello. This is Juice, and I am calling from Genoa, New York.

When I was growing up, my mom, who was a daughter of Czechoslovakian immigrants, had several phrases that have always stuck in my mind, and I never asked her when she was alive where they came from or why she said them.

So I thought maybe you could help.

Well, give it a try.

Yeah, what were they?

The first one that comes to mind is, I am so mad I could spit nickels. And as a child, I was pretty scared of her, but I always thought, boy, I wish you would.

Why not dollar bills?

Yeah, or dollar.

Well, when I was a kid 60 years ago, nickels were pretty cool. A lot of the dependent candy store for nickels.

So mad I could spit nickels. Like she was a slot machine paying off.

That’s what I was wondering as I was thinking about this. It’s like, what would spit nickels? A slot machine? But that doesn’t seem like you’d be mad.

No, it’s just one of a variety of these things that you spit. You’re so angry that, well, there’s just the expression, I’m so angry I could spit.

Or I could spit.

Yeah, people would say, I could spit, just meaning they’re angry.

Or I could spit tacks. I could spit nails. I could spit rust. I could chew nails. I could spit rivets. I could spit blood. Or I could spit 10 feet.

There are a lot of these.

Who spits when they’re angry?

Well, camels.

Maybe camels spit.

Camels do, yeah. Well, I don’t know if they’re angry, but they definitely spit. And in Australia, they spit chips if they’re thirsty.

A what?

Yeah, they spit chips if they’re thirsty. I’m so thirsty, I could spit chips.

Some people, if they’re thirsty, they spit cotton. But anyway, the origin of this is murky, but it’s really just about you being so angry that you do something extraordinary, that you’re out of your head. You’re behaving unusually.

When we are angry, we don’t act ourselves.

That is true.

That is true.

My mom chose to spit nickels. And the other one, she used to say if we were in the car and a motorcycle would speed past us, she’d say, he’s going to go head over tin cups.

I have no idea why he would go head over tin cups.

Martha, that’s one of a set, isn’t it? There’s head over heels, of course, but rump over tea kettle or head over tea cups and ass over elbow or head over appetite or head over apple carts and all different variety of things.

And these go back well into the 1800s. And they’re all polite ways of saying that you fell down and you’re discombobulated and you’re probably you fell so far that your rear end went over your front end.

OK.

Kind of cartoon style.

Cartoon style.

Maybe even a little bit like what they’re today on the Internet. They call it the full scorpion.

The full scorpion is where you fall down face first and your back legs go up over your head, kind of like a scorpion’s tail reaching for a sting.

Yeah, that’s a hard landing.

Wow.

Yeah.

So they’re both pretty straightforward.

They are.

And yeah, now that you’re saying them, it’s like, oh, wait.

Yeah, sounds like your mom had a lot of expressions, Juice.

She did. And her name was Mary Martha. So I always remember I’m taken by that name.

So, yeah.

Well, I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. You can’t have too many Marthas.

No, you can’t.

Thanks for calling. I really appreciate it.

Well, I really love your show.

Thank you again for taking my call.

All right.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.