Waste Not, Want Not

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Mary, and I live in Allen, Texas.

Hello, Mary. Welcome to the program.

I am originally from Houston, Texas.

My father is from, well, my father has passed away, but he was from past Christiane, Mississippi, and my mother was from Chester, Texas, which is in East Texas.

Okay, so I grew up with the expression, waste not, want not. And I’m married to a lovely person who grew up in New York who laughs every time I say that.

Laughs?

Yes.

Why?

He thinks it’s ridiculous and it doesn’t make any sense. And so consequently, I have two fabulous children who also laugh when I say it.

Poor mama.

You know, and I don’t know whether I say this because people in Houston or Texas say it or if it came from Mississippi with my father, but clearly the sophisticated people of New York don’t say it, according to my husband.

-huh.

Well, now, what kind of context would you say this in, Mary?

Well, you know, the kids can be throwing out something, oh, I don’t want these shoes anymore. They still fit, but I don’t want them. And my comeback would be, you know, waste not, want not. And they don’t get what I mean.

They think that I want them to hang on to this particular thing forever because at some point in the future they’re going to want it. But that’s not what I mean when I say that. It’s more of like a philosophy on life.

You know, if you don’t make a habit of throwing things away and wasting things, you won’t get to a point in the future where you needed things and you don’t have them because you made a habit of wasting.

Right.

But they don’t get that. They think it’s funny. So when I say it, I get Snickers.

Yeah, it’s about the habit. That’s the important part of it, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, they don’t get it. This is such an old, basic idea on how to be a good person, about not wasting things.

And I think the waste not, what not is such a perfect crystallization of that concept.

I think it’s exactly the thing to say when somebody’s being wasteful.

It’s exactly the right thing to say.

I’m so glad to hear you say that.

This proverb is so ingrained into the, it appears in French and Dutch and Russian and Swedish and Spanish.

And there’s like some variation of this idea in absolutely every language that I can check.

Really?

And it’s because we live now in a time of bounty and in a time of abundance.

And this is a rare moment in history where people could eat well and live well all together where most of us are doing okay.

And even the poorest of us are doing far better than people 200 years ago.

So this idea of not wasting is still a message that needs to be transmitted.

What I think is happening here is they know exactly what you mean, and they’re just pulling your chain.

You think so?

That’s exactly what it is.

Because you sound really excited about it.

You sound a little worked up, and I think they want to see what mama’s going to do when they pull her chain a little bit.

You might be right.

Sometimes my husband will even say something like, well, they say that in Chester, Texas.

But I think this expression, it’s sort of mathematical in its elegance and simplicity.

There’s something really beautiful about it.

And to me, Mary, I think it also has kind of a biblical incantation, don’t you think?

I mean, I think about passages in Scripture like, fear not, or judge not, waste not, want not.

I mean, it’s so efficient.

I should say that the history of this particular construction goes back 300 years or so, maybe even more.

And there are a variety of versions going back to the 1500s in English.

And, of course, this has been said in a lot of different ways in English because, as I mentioned before, just not wasting things is such an important part of continuing to be a surviving civilization.

Civilization is built upon conservation and the reservation of your resources and not the wasting of them.

Well, Mary, you sound like you feel better.

I do feel vindicated.

Yes.

It makes perfect, perfect sense.

We’ve loaded you up with ammunition, Mary.

Go off to battle.

Oh, thank you so much.

And thanks for the opportunity to be on the show.

Okay.

Well, thank you for calling, Mary.

You’re welcome.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

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