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You can't say that!

By PAT WICK

© Another Day in the Country

While some of you readers may think that I dare to say a lot in this column, there's a whole bunch of things I can't say! People preface their remarks to me in this fashion. "Now remember, you can't say that!" As usual, I think it's the best part.

I love the folks who are brash and bold at my query, "Can I say that?" answering, "Sure, why not?" That's my style! People attempting to live a transparent life where what you see is what you've got. That doesn't mean they expose everything — it usually just means that people are willing to chuckle at themselves and life's foibles.

The students in my Butler Art Class talk about almost everything, but the other day they were amusing each other with a list of things that used to be verboten.

"You never said legs," said Betty, "especially if you were referring to a woman. You said limbs. That was much more genteel."

I was reminded that, in the olden days, you never ever said a woman was pregnant. She was, "in a family way." Menopause was another word that wasn't said out loud. Instead my aunt used to call it "a woman's sickness," or "having problems with her nerves."

Nerves had a lot of things laid at their doorstep. If you were annoyed, they were "getting on your nerves." Children often fell into that category. If you had depression or a bad marriage and couldn't cope — even with menopause — it was considered a "nervous breakdown."

There was a long list of bodily functions that had new names like tinkle and do-do. I remember the days when we had to designate with one finger or two the nature of our visit to the bathroom. Which reminds me that bathrooms were "powder rooms, ladies rooms, or men's rooms.

In certain families there were certain words banned. "Turd" was one of those things you just didn't say in my in-law's family. When I hollered, "there are mice turds in the silverware drawer," my husband was more concerned about my verbage than the offending mouse. "You said what?"

Hands on my hips I countered, "They did WHAT!" My mother said it would have been nicer for me to have said, "They left their calling card."

If someone had a mental illness, without all the more modern diagnostic categories, they were "well, you know a little . . . (circular motion beside your ear) . . . tetched." I'm not sure if that was considered polite or just sufficient. You didn't really talk about it. When we tried to open the discussion of genetics in our family tree that seemed to carry bi-polar tendencies, the oldsters were aghast.

If you were sick, you were "indisposed" or "laid up." If you had arthritis in your joints you were, "stove up."

The way we express ourselves certainly changes. And the lines are drawn differently as to what we divulge. These days, we even have laws about proper ways to speak and what is considered politically correct.

Well, it's another day in the country, and I must confess that while Tooltime Tim admonishes me to follow his example "and just call it like it is," there are a whole lot of things I don't talk about — anything negative, derogatory, or discouraging, I can't say that!

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