A Frazzle Dazzle One Step!

Dale at 16, Oysterville, 1927

The use of colorful language runs in our family.  Not the colorful sort that seems to rage rampant in print and behind those bleeps on television.  I mean expressive without being offensive.  My grandfather Espy, for instance was pretty famous for never swearing but for getting his point across, nevertheless.

“Dad burn it!” I’d hear him say.  Or maybe “Dad gum it!”  and I knew he was more than a little frustrated about something.  Sometimes it was “Son of a sea cook!” or “Consarn it!” or perhaps “Ding Bust it!”  But the ultimate in epithets from Papa was “Devil!” and, lest you think those are all pretty tame, you had to be there.  As those of us who knew him well remember, those words came bursting from his mouth like thunderbolts!  Not often, but certainly memorable.

Mona at 7 or 8 — Oysterville, 1911

My mother’s colorful speech was a bit different from her father’s.  She wasn’t substituting the acceptable for the unacceptable.  Far from it.  She was simply being her usual, inimitable self.  “She just wore me to a frazzle-dazzle one step” she often said after being cornered by a particularly irksome neighbor.  Or, she was known to refer to women of questionable moral character as “woo woo girls” and when I’d asked one too many ‘why’ questions, “Why’s a hen” was the only answer she’d give me.  Or when she was wanting me to make up my own mind:  “You’re the doctor; I’m only the nurse.”

Charlie at Three – Claremont Day Nursery, 1959

Too, there were many stories about my Aunt Mona’s childhood expressions – words that became part of the family lexicon.  “I piddly stimbled!” was what we all said after almost falling down.  It must have been young Mona’s way of saying, “I practically stumbled.”  The best Mona-ism, though, is what I say to this day when I’m refusing seconds after a big dinner: “My shimmy shirt and pants are full” – Mona’s little girl understanding of the colloquialism, ‘my sufficiency is sophonsified.’

My son, Charlie, was also inventive word-wise.  He worried that the water in the bathtub might overfloat, and once commented on his well-endowed grandmother as being volumptuous.  My all-time favorite, though, was his three-year-old answer to “What do you call it when two people sing the same song at the same time?”  “A coincidence,” came his prompt reply!  Spot on, say I!

4 Responses to “A Frazzle Dazzle One Step!”

  1. Jane E Smith says:

    My now 38 year, also living in LA, when 6 years old announced loudly “I know the difference between boys and girls.” All heads turned. “Boys have penises and girls have pajamas.”

  2. sydney says:

    Out the mouths of babes!

  3. Debby G says:

    I have been looking into an expression my in-laws use, something I had believed was unique to their family, but apparently not. “My sufficiency is sofanciful, my shimmy shirt and pants are full.” I have seen “my sufficiency is sophonsified” mentioned is several blogs/websites, but yours is the first I have come across with the second part. Where did Aunt Mona live? Was it Southwestern Ontario perhaps?

  4. sydney says:

    Hi Debby!  So great to hear from you and learn a bit more about my Aunt Mona’s (mistaken) expression “my shimmy shirt and pants are full.”  I had no idea that it might have come from “My Sufficiency is Suffonsified”” which I’ve just found noted at this website: https://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-suf1.htm — thanks to the nudge you gave me in your email.  Mona was the fourth of seven children (my mother, seven years younger was the seventh) of Helen Richardson and Harry Espy.  They were all raised in Oysterville in SW Washington state as was their father, Harry whose father, Robert Hamilton Espy had co-founded the town in 1854.However in the above mentioned website, I note that the expression ” from Virginia-North Carolina, an older generation, (maybe a hundred years back)”.   My grandmother’s people were from that area of the South and left at the conclusion of the Civil War, so it could have been an expression that she grew up with and passed on to her children…  Sorry to say, no one in the family is from Ontario or from anywhere else in Canada.If you learn any more about this expression, do let me know!                                      Sydney

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