One of the unintended consequences of the technological age, we are told, is a homogenization of American culture. Through technology, our world has become much smaller, mainly because we can communicate instantly with people everywhere, sharing our ideas, beliefs and opinions. Over time, the removal of those natural boundaries of communication encroach our regionalism. Someday, the theory goes, much of what defines a region — The South, for example — will have been obscured or altered to the point that regional differences will be hard to detect.
Among the casualties may be the unique expressions and slang that identified us as being distinctly Southern or distinctly Eastern, etc.
But we haven’t quite reached that point yet and I was reminded of this, oddly enough, by Mollie.
Mollie is one our four dogs, and the oldest. In fact, she is so old that it is difficult to say exactly how old she is. Her eyesight and hearing are both failing and, although she still has four legs, she operates on just three, holding her left rear leg pitifully aloft as she putters around the house. Given her delicate state — in deference to her antiquity — Tess and I are moved to provide her benefits that the other dogs do not receive. For example, her dry dog food is moistened and heated and pressed into a stew of sorts, served slightly warm. She also gets her favorite spot on the sofa and waits to be picked up and placed there, you know, because she is simply too old to jump up on the sofa herself.
But I suspect that Mollie is really just playing us.
I have noticed that when she believes no one is watching, she moves around the house with surprisingly speed and dexterity. She will also enthusiastically eat Vera’s dry dog food. When no one is watching, she has the appetite and constitution of a truck driver. She is also quite able to jump up onto the sofa when no one is around
But the greatest privilege of old age is that Mollie gets to sleep in our bed.
If we retire before Mollie, at some point she will come hobbling feebly down the hallway to the bedroom where she will sit on the floor on my side of the bed and — I swear I am not making this up — clear her throat repeatedly until she gets my attention, at which point I reach over scoop her up and put her in bed. She then moves to the opposite side of the bed and sleeps until she has judged that both Tess and I are sleeping, too.
At this point, she begins he nightly ritual of scratching herself as she nestles next to Tess. Of course, this wakes Tess up and I hear her grumbled whispers of “Stop it! Stop it!”
The other night, I was in a particularly deep sleep when this exchange occurred.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s Mollie,” Tess said. “She’s scratching and carryin’ on.”
Carryin’ on. As a native-born Southerner, I’ve heard that expression all my life. Somehow, though, it struck me as hysterically funny this time.
“Scratching is one thing,” I said. “It’s the carryin’ on that really gets to you, huh?”
The absurdity of that oft-heard, rarely contemplated, idiom had us both laughing out loud as Mollie looked at us with a glazed-eyed expression that said, “Hey, I’m trying to sleep here … Quit carryin’ on!”
I suppose the phrase “carryin’ on” was meant to convey the idea of excessive reaction to something. Someone just won’t “let it go.” Instead, he “carries on” about it.
So in a sense, maybe it is a useful expression after all.
Of course, there are many other Southern phrases that do not perform any meaningful function. They are to the language what jewelry is to our wardrobe — they are accessories, adornments.
I dare not even attempt to present a list of such phrases, for I would undoubtedly leave out far more than I included.
“Fixin’ to” is one phrase that immediately comes to mind, but there are others that are slightly more obscure. For example, only in the South is the word “liable” anything other than a legal term. In other parts of the country, the word is used exclusively to assign responsibility, i.e. “The company was held liable for the unsafe working conditions that led to the accident.”
Here in the South, though, the word has a different meaning: It suggests something we anticipate, i.e., “If you leave that pie out on the table, he’s liable to eat the whole thing before the company gets here.”
Come to think of it, “company,” is also unique to the South. Other people in other places have visitors. If you told somebody in Massachusetts that company was coming for dinner, the likely response would be, “Well, it better be a small start-up. We only have seating for eight.”
There are so many such phrases whose meanings have been lost. In my mother’s kitchen, a “right smart” was a standard measure. Now? Who knows?
If it is true that we are becoming more and more a global society I fear we may lose the dear old jewelry of our jargon that has been passed down through the generations. That makes me sad. I like the jewelry and find it interesting.
Maybe I am making more of an issue of this than it really is.
It could be that I am just carryin’ on.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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