For some reason, I dredged up some memories of things my parents said to me when I was a kid, mostly phrases or admonitions I guess, meant to teach, or perhaps intimidate or maybe just blow hot air, I don’t know. And then, I wondered, are these common parental sayings that last throughout the years and therefore have become standard jargon for all parents?

You are probably wondering, how many years ago was this happening?  Well, in the interest in my own security, and you know the paparazzi knowing too much about me, I will just say that I was a kid back when there were no cell phones, no email, and Al Gore had not yet invented the internet. (Who is Al Gore?)

1. Eat it or Wear it: I heard this at the dinner table once, when my cousin came over for dinner. My uncle told them, “you guys better finish everything on your plate or you’re going to have to wear it the rest of the day or evening.” So, my astute parents remembered that phrase and used it on me about 1000 times and soon I didn’t care whether I wore my broccoli or ate it. But they never said eat or wear it before church though. Must look good in church.
2. Go Play in the streets: Translation here is that of course, they wanted me out of the house, and when I heard this I ran, and that leads me to number 3. But before I get there, yes we played in the streets especially in mud puddles, rode skate boards down the hills, and drove our bikes behind DDT insecticide trucks.
3. Come back when it is dark: Always a good rule of thumb because as soon as they said, play in the streets, we ran all over playing ditch, climbing up on top of the school roof to play stick baseball, driving our bikes to the Monon Creek to catch ugly crawdads or around the state prison or perhaps to the store to buy baseball cards and gum with bottle deposits we turned in when we found them in the weeds around town. Sometimes there were playboy magazines near these old bottles in the weeds of empty parking lots. That was educational, but always wondered why people threw those magazines out. Sometimes we got in trouble with the neighbors and they pulled guns on us for no reason. See: Dick Tracy and Chuck Roast blog from a few years ago. So we came back at dark to eat because we had no watches.
4. Dr. Seuss was a communist: At that age I didn’t know what a communist was, but I figured it was something bad, and apparently they were red or something. I think they were going to drop a nuclear bomb on us, so we learned how to do bomb drills. I read his stuff once, but thought it was pretty stupid and didn’t get the political undertones. I still don’t.
5. Children are to be seen and not heard. This is self explanatory. So we kept quiet in general.
6. If you play with fire you will pee your pants: I think this was their way of telling us to be safe with matches and fire. I became pretty good with matches and fire in boy scouts and never peed my pants.

So there you have it. I wonder, you parents out there, do you say these things to your kids?