Do
you remember Murgatroyd?
Do
you remember that word? Would you
believe the email spell checker did not recognize the word Murgatroyd?
Heavens
to Mergatroyd! The epression was popularized by the cartoon charater
Snagglepuss – a regular on the Yogi Bear Show in the 1960’s.
Lost
Words from our childhood:
Words
gone as fast as the buggy whip! Sad
really!
Well,
I hope you are Hunky Dory after you read this and chuckle.
About
a month ago, someone illuminated some old expressions that I have copied here. Expressions that have become obsolete
because of the inexorable march of technology.
These phrases included:
“Don’t
touch that dial,”
“Carbon
copy,”
“You
sound like a broken record,”
“Hung
out to dry.”
Back
in the olden days we had a lot of ‘moxie.’
We’d
put on our best ‘bib and tucker’ to’ straighten up and fly right’ and Gay mean ‘happy’.
Heavens
to Betsy!
Gee Whillikers!
Jumping
Jehoshaphat!
Holy
Moley!
We
were ‘in like Flynt’ and ‘living the life of Riley’', and even a regular guy
couldn’t accuse us of being a knucklehead, a nincompoop or a pill.
Not
for all the tea in China!
Back
in the olden days, life used to be swell, but when’s the last time anything was
swell?
Swell
has gone the way of beehives, pageboys and the D.A.; of spats, knickers,
fedoras, poodle skirts, saddle shoes and pedal pushers...AND DON'T FORGET...
Saddle Stitched Pants
Oh,
my aching back! Kilroy was here, but he
isn’t anymore.
We
wake up from what surely has been just a short nap, and before we can say, “Well,
I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!” or, “This is a ‘fine kettle of fish” they are all
gone!
We discover
that the words we grew up with, the words that seemed omnipresent, as oxygen,
have vanished with scarcely a notice from our tongues and our pens and our
keyboards. Poof, go the words of our
youth, the words we’ve left behind
We
blink, and they’re gone.
Where
have all those great phrases gone?
Long
gone:
Pshaw,
The
milkman did it.
Hey!
It’s your nickel.
Don’t
forget to pull the chain.
Knee
high to a grasshopper.
Well,
Fiddlesticks!
Going
like sixty.
I’ll
see you in the funny papers.
Don’t
take any wooden nickels.
Wake
up and smell the roses.
It
turns out there are more of these lost words and expressions than Carter has
liver pills. ("Carter's Little
Liver Pills" are gone too!)
We of
a certain age have been blessed to live in changeable times. For a child each new word is like a shiny
toy, a toy that has no age. We at the other
end of the chronological arc have the advantage of remembering there are words that
once did not exist and there were words that once strutted their hour upon the
earthly stage and now are heard no more, except in our collective memory.
It’s one
of the greatest advantages of aging.
Leaves
us to wonder where Superman will find a phone booth...
See
ya later, alligator, Okidoki, and so many more that have slipped my memory, too.
WE
ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE FABULOUS 40/50'S.
NO
ONE WILL EVER HAVE THAT OPPORTUNITY AGAIN.
GOD
GAVE US ONE OF OUR MOST PRECIOUS GIFTS:
............OUR
MEMORIES........
Sadly,
though, for some of us, that too is beginning to fade!!! :-(
