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Colder than a witch's tit

My mom used to say that particular metaphor (analogy? surely not simile?) when I was a kid. Someone else I know recently dropped it in conversation and I was dumbfounded... I had never thought anyone but my mom used that particular phrase. Now it makes me wonder if it was on television or something in the 70s.

But my friend dropping it in conversation brought to mind a very particular childhood memory.

I remember my mom saying that phrase when I was very young . . . young enough that I asked her what a tit was. She asked what I thought it was -- a terrific parenting stall tactic, by the way, one I have used -- and I answered I thought it was the wart on the end of her nose (cuz all witches were green and warty, right?) She let me go on thinking that. But what I remember from that day was my mom barely containing her laughter at the absurdity of our conversation. And my knowing -- knowing -- from her laughter that my definition of tit was wrong. I knew that as surely as a little kid can know anything. But I did not have any means of getting the right definition, cuz I also figured out that I had stumbled into something naughty. I don't have a particular memory of when I figured it out, only of that day, of being wrong and powerless.

Anyway, its fooking cold, as my dad would say. And that's really the point of all this.

Full post as published by Butterflyfish on December 05, 2009 (boomark / email).