Pushover?

(This one's for you, Maurice.)

My grandmother (we call her Nan) has a phrase for every situation--even now as she sits in a long-term care facility, recovering from the massive stroke she had last summer. She could always speak paragraphs with one sound: hmmmmmmm. That "hmmmmm" provides her with as many different "words" as the Inuit (Canada's northern native people) have for snow.

You just know, that when the "hmmmmmm" comes out, you're somehow in trouble or she has noticed something she disapproves of.

And that "hmmmm" precedes many a clever and colourful remark.

For example, in my grandmother's world, one is not a pushover. Rather, someone, is "soft." And not just soft, either--"soft as a cabbage stump." [A cabbage stump, that is, which has been boiled for hours on end stuck in the same pot as salt meat (a saltier, fattier version of brisket for you Americans)].

But there's even more to the saying. The full phrase?

"Hmmmmmmm......She's soft as a cabbage stump. She'd give away her arse and shit through her ribs."

Since Nan might never get to speak that phrase herself again, it's high time the rest of us started putting it to use.

Posted by Bush Whacker at March 5, 2003 11:26 PM