Vexations may be petty, but they are vexations still. ~Michel de Montaigne
No big vexations around here for me except that ice that won’t melt away out on the deck. And how hard it is to walk in the crusty snow. And how much I’m ready for some sunshine. And how I need to be coming up with more words for my work in progress. Okay, so maybe I am thinking up a few vexations just to introduce a repeat of this post from eight years ago. So with a few changes, here goes. Hope the rerun isn’t a vexation for you. 🙂
When I was a kid, I was taught that a lady had to watch what she said. If she was irritated or stumped her toe, a girl was limited on available words to express her vexation. Even the innocuous darn was forbidden in my house. Often, if that word slipped out, you were reminded that the word meant repairing holes in socks.
Most young people in this day and time probably have no idea how to go about darning socks. I don’t know much about the process either. I did try to mend a few sock holes back when I first got married. I just ended up with a bump of threads that hurt your toe. I guess I needed one of those glass or wooden darning eggs that the mender inserted in the sock and then with darning needle and thread repaired the hole. If people lacked a real darning egg, they made do with a lightbulb or a ceramic doorknob.
Amazingly enough, you can find how-to videos about darning socks out on the web. Not that I’m going to take up darning. I’m too busy “darning” all the “threads” of my story together. So I just buy new socks and keep the economy rolling. Besides, everybody knows that dryers eat socks anyway and you’d probably end up with only one of a pair you darned. These days you could mix and match them since wildly differently patterned socks in a pair seems to be the new style. Back when I went to school if you wore one brown sock and one blue sock, people noticed and laughed at you. I sort of like the crazy unmatched pairs now that my grandkids sometimes wear.
The picture up top is Mom. She was always a lady but she did have a favorite vexation word. “Fiddlesticks” or sometimes just “fiddle.” My daughter says she finds herself saying fiddle now when she gets vexed and in the process remembers Mom. That got me wondering about the word and in the process of wondering I discovered a lot I didn’t know about fiddlesticks.
See the guys in the photo. They’re playing fiddlesticks. Fiddlesticks are traditional instruments used to add percussion to old-time and Cajun fiddle music, allowing two persons to play the fiddle at the same time. While the fiddler plays with his bow, a second person uses a pair of straws, sticks, or knitting needles to tap out a rhythm on the strings over the upper fingerboard (between the bow and the fiddler’s fingering hand). This is also called “beating the straws” or “playing the straws.” Nobody knows for sure where this technique originated, but some think it probably arose in the eastern United States. The technique has become rarer over time as the music has changed, but numerous examples have been recorded. (Info from Wikipedia)
My mother’s use of the word to express irritation and the odd way of helping a fiddle player’s music sound different aren’t the only ways fiddlesticks is used. A lot of stores and restaurants are named Fiddlesticks. There’s a country club in New York and a town in Florida. And from the images I pulled up on the internet a video game has a creepy character called Fiddlesticks. Who knew Mom’s vexation word had so many variations?
Another word I heard when I was a kid that was used mainly by a neighbor who loved to come sit on the porch with Mom and Dad to talk away the afternoon, was thunderation. Tommy was good at telling stories and sometimes laughing at himself in those stories, but when something went sour it was always “thunderation.” So I went out on the web to check out that word. An outdoor steel roller coaster that opened at Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri in 1993 is named Thunderation. My neighbor’s use of the word pre-dated that by a long time. But here’s a photo of the roller coaster.
But even more interesting is that Thunderation is a scouts’ camp song. Now the Girl Scouts claim the song, but in the beginning it may have been any scout’s or guide’s song. Here is a sample of the lyrics.
“Thunder, thunder, thunderation.
We are the (Scout/guide) Association.
When we work with determination
We create a sensation.”
I’m guessing if this was sung at a Girl Scout camp, there would have been some foot stomping to make the thunderation. Link to Girl Scouts singing Thunderation.
So what about when you were a kid? How were you allowed to express your vexation? Or not?
Comments 22
I wasn’t allowed to use anything but “Oh, piffle!” no matter how bad the situation was. I’m 75 years old now, and the shadow of my mother still hangs over me if I even think about using anything more colorful.
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Your mom would be proud, Gin. Piffle works. Sounds like a great vexation word.
I don’t remember being vexed as a child although I probably was. I do remember my grandma saying “fiddlesticks” when she was vexed and now I say it, too and always think of her when I do. Maybe my grandkids will wind up saying it and thinking of me.
Author
I like that thought, Lee. I do think of Mom when I hear somebody say “fiddlesticks” and so does my daughter. So I think it’s a good chance that your grandkids will think of you when they can’t get something to work the way they want and fiddlesticks comes out to relieve their vexation.
Thanks Ann for the reminder of these old time term! I remember the Girl Scout’s song. As a former leader, we sang that song many times in the 1980’s. There are so many terms and phrases that have gone away over time. The one that I remember most is the icebox. The word refrigerator was not in the vocabulary of the older generation. There were still a few iceboxes around and in use, when I was very young. And yes, I still darn some socks, without a egg or device. 😊
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It’s good to know someone still darns socks in our throw-away culture, Carrie. We would all be better off if we did think about mending and saving our things, but then I suppose those selling socks would see a decline in sales. I doubt many of us are going to follow your lead and darn our socks, so I think the sock industry is safe. 🙂 I remember when people said to put things in the ice box meaning the refrigerator. I had an old ice box in my bedroom when I was kid that I stored my clothes in. But I also knew someone who had an icebox and you could still buy the blocks of ice at the icehouse in town. It is fun to take a trip back in time to how we used to think about things.
Neat that you have sung the Girl Scout song. Around here, it’s Girl Scout cookie time right now.
I love your explanation of fiddlesticks and the accompanying picture.
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Until I did this post, Diana, I had no idea that fiddlesticks was more than a word my mother sometimes said. I was fascinated by it being a musical technique. I guess I didn’t know much about fiddle playing. I should have used that in one of my mountain stories. Maybe someday I will.
I don’t remember what words we used to express vexation–certainly not swear words. One pastor’s daughter who was a friend of my daughter’s would say, “Oh, my grannies!” when she was vexed. It was so cute that I’ve always remembered it and will say it sometimes myself just for the humor of it.
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And her grannies would surely approve, Suzanne. That is a funny one, although when you poked my memory with that, I do remember us saying, “good granny” sometimes. And even “good granny gravy.” LOL.
I like you I was not allowed to say darn, dang ,gosh golly or a lot of other slang words. That was hard because friends used them, but I got in trouble for it. My mom also said fiddlesticks, and my grandpa was a woodworker and made her a darning egg, I still have it but don’t use it. You have brought back a lot of memories in this post, enjoyed reading it.
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Glad you enjoyed the post, Donna. I might wish kids of today would only be exposed to golly gosh words now.
Neat that you have a darning egg. I’m sure mom had one but I don’t know if any of us sisters kept it. For sure, we don’t use it. LOL
I, too, was a Baptist preacher’ daughter and NO words resembling a curse word, not even “darn” were allowed. We could say “doggone it” , “phooey”, or the aforementioned “fiddlesticks”. My Dad was fond of “tarnation”, as in “what in tarnation are you doing?”, or something to that effect.
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I heard that what in tarnation are you doing line before when I was a kid, Lynda. I do remember doggone being an okay vexation word too. Dad, who sometimes said words that weren’t so nice but rarely where any of his daughters could hear him, would sometimes say dadbum it. Could be that might have been too much like “darn” for your preacher dad.
My great grandma told my mom to say sugar, so that’s what we used. Sometimes we would switch it up and say sugar foot. I still use this and now my daughter says it, but I’ve also caught a student using it once before.
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I just told your mother that I used to say sugar foot. Funny how we can be connected by words like this. And it’s cute that your daughter has picked it up from you. It’s great that you are a good example to her.
I remember, when I was a young girl, my Ma told me when I got upset to say Sugar instead of a bad word.I still say Sugar when I get vexed.I think of her often when I say it.
Author
I think we used to say sugar foot sometimes when we were kids, Lisa. I’m sort of a “bummer” person these days when things aren’t going well.
As a Baptist preachers daughter, the word “darn” was considered a bad word in our home. “Phooey” was about the limit of vexation words allowed. And, I have to say, after hearing some of the language used by today’s youth, it would be nice to go back to those times!
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I’m with you on that, Judi. We could say phooey too. And I have been known to say blankety blank blank with no word other than blank in my head. LOL. But that might have been heard wrong by others so could be I should have stuck with phooey. I do agree that people say all sorts of things that I never heard when I was a kid and words I would have had to look up in the dictionary to know what they meant. But things are different with really ugly language and pictures out there on social media.
I can’t remember the words I used as a youngster to show my vexation. But I just finished a series of books where a character used “horsefeathers.” And it was contagious.
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I’ve heard people say “horsefeathers,” Nancy. How about “good golly, Miss Molly?” That’s more for surprise or amazement than vexation though. 🙂