Unutterably Silly Funny Things My (Insert Relative Here) Told Me

[amward]

Another of my mother's when we asked how old she was: As old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.

[lestatar]

^ lol! Reminds me of what my great-grandmother said to a restaurant host one birthday dinner [I believe it was her 106th?] years ago:

Him: So, how old are you now?
GreatGrandma: <with chin out and lightning quick as you please>
How old do you think I am??!?

[Skye Savoy]

These are very interesting.
My husband sneeze a lot. I guess it's my mother's fault.
Thanks for sharing.

[Skye Savoy]

Originally Posted by lestatar

^ lol! Reminds me of what my great-grandmother said to a restaurant host one birthday dinner [I believe it was her 106th?] years ago:

Him: So, how old are you now?
GreatGrandma: <with chin out and lightning quick as you please>
How old do you think I am??!?

OMG! 106? That is fantastic.
I hope the restaurant host didn't answer her question.

[lestatar]

^ lol...he actually recovered pretty well. I recall he said something like, "No more than 80" and GreatGrandma made a rude pffft sound and waved him off, saying, in Chinese, "You're crazy!"

She slipped away in her sleep about 3 years after that. Thing is, no one in the family knows exactly how old she really was. Record keeping in rural southern China back in those days was essentially non-existent or inaccurate at best. She may very well have been a few years older [or younger] - we will never know.

An amazing woman - among many other things, including surviving Japanese incursions into China and hiding out in mountain caves, around the age of 75 she:
- left her home for the first and last time to come to America;
- saw and took her first and only airplane ride;
- fell in love with Star Trek [Captain Kirk of course], Kentucky Fried Chicken and NYC pizza, CocaCola and President Reagan;
- along with her daughter, raised 2 great-grandkids [my brother and me].

[encapuchado]

Thanks for the link. I guess many of these things have an European origin and from there they jumped the pond to the new world.

Another thing that I have heard in Mexico (not only in my family) is that owls announce the death of Indians (i.e. Mexican native Indians). The sayings goes like "when the owl sings the Indian dies." Some years ago, that saying took another dimension because in the Mexican Baseball League there was one team nicknamed Owls and another nicknamed, you guess, Indians Unfortunately both teams are now defunct.

One more thing I remember from my granny, and I think it is also very common, is that a big forefront denotes a smart people. Another signal of a smart person is if there is a right angle between the forefront, the base of the nose, and the ears. If there is less than 90 degrees, then the person was "obtuse."

Originally Posted by ardeegee

That one is pretty widely used:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&s...=goose+walking



Yep, my family, too-- if you drop a piece of food, someone has "begrudged" it.

Other family sayings:

If your right hand is itching, you are going to shake hands with a stranger. If your left hand is itching, you are going to come into money.

If your ears are ringing, someone is talking about you (that is another common one.)

A cure for asthma in a child is to stand him/her against a tree and drive in a nail above their head-- when they grow past the level of the nail, the asthma will be cured (my grandmother did that with me (that one isn't original to my family either.)

[AJ Starr]

When I was very young, around 5 or 6, my aunt told me if I ate the seeds of a watermelon that they would sprout in my stomach and grow out my ears.

To this day, I pick EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THE SEEDS out of a bite of watermelon before I eat it.

[Bikeridr]

Watermelon seeds (and any other fruit seeds) were also in Norway told as would sprout in your stomach.

Another thing we were taught in Norway was not to eat snow as you would get maggots in your stomach.
(Today we only tell our children not to eat yellow snow)

[wyndslash]

i'm not sure if it's funny, but it is a myth, sort of. it was always said that if you see someone with their head cut off, that said person would die soon and that you should tell them to burn their shirt as soon as they get home.

[encapuchado]

Another myth (not from my family, I heard this in elementary school) is that if you hear an ambulance, then you need to touch a button in your shirt just to be sure nobody from your family goes in that ambulance.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by wyndslash

it was always said that if you see someone with their head cut off, that said person would die soon

Actually, that is usually a pretty good bet, unless you are a chicken named Mike.

[orlok]

"If the wind changes while you are pulling that face, it will stay that way!" (Mother)

[Figlilly]

I have two from separate grandmothers.

My paternal grandmother used to say 'I'll give you dolly come home with the soap'. It was a threat and meant you were going to get a hiding. She never smacked us so it was said in jest although I am sure she had used it seriously on my father and his brothers.

My maternal grandmother had a funny saying when she shook a die during a board game. She would chant, 'Rattle my bones over the stones, poor little orphan that nobody owns. Give me a six.'

[wyndslash]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

Actually, that is usually a pretty good bet, unless you are a chicken named Mike.

i think it happened to someone before. i mean, someone saw someone else with their head cut off and they quickly approached that person and told them. still, pretty creepy stuff @_@

[Latinandgreek]

My mom used to say that when I had the hiccups that someone was talking about me.