I have been casting about for a topic for this week’s entry in the never-ending torrent of words served up for this elite and discriminating audience. I knew that once I hit on the idea, I could have something pounded out in two shakes. What, you might ask, are two shakes? Or even one shake? I have no idea, and can only tell you that I learned it from my mother. I suspect that I am not alone in having a steady stock of Mom-sourced expressions that seemed unique.

My mother was a Depression-era kid who was born and raised on a farm in northwest Ohio. It was a fairly typical upbringing of that time. Except, perhaps, for the pet pig she and her two sisters doted over for awhile. Mom’s time and place evidently gave rise to a good number of sayings and expressions that she would use for the rest of her life. Sayings and expressions, I should add, that are mysterious in their origin. Like “two shakes”. Sometimes she would expand it to “two shakes of a lambs tail”. It meant quick. Like “I’ll be there in two shakes”. Or “dinner will be ready in two shakes”. I don’t believe I have ever heard the expression from anyone else, but it resides permanently in my brain, even if it is not frequently used.

A related expression was “Make it snappy”. “Pick up those toys and make it snappy” or when preparing to leave the house with we youngsters, “get to the bathroom and make it snappy”. I have heard others of her generation use this one, but I have no idea what it means. Does it have to do with snapping the fingers? I don’t think anyone really knows. I have learned that “Make It Snappy” was the name of a 1922 Broadway Review that starred Eddie Cantor and introduced the hit song “Yes, We Have No Bananas”, but this may have nothing to do with the phrase. I did not research this exhaustively, because I am already late in hitting “publish” and have to make it snappy.

I must have been a slow child, because Mom’s expressions for speeding things up keep coming to me. Like “in a jiffy”. It should be clear by now that my mother was a girl in a hurry. She did things quickly and expected everyone else to do things quickly as well. I think I inherited this trait. Which I realized one day as I watched my dearly departed mother in law doing some cooking. She needed to empty the contents of one mixing bowl into another, and was doing it with an ordinary soup spoon. While talking. She would do two or three spoonfuls (which were a mere drop in the bucket, to use another phrase) and would then stop while she would converse for a minute. Then another few spoonfuls. Then more talking. I watched this process and it took every ounce of my self-control to repress the voice that was rising within me, screaming at the top of its lungs “JUST GIMME THE DAMNED BOWL AND LET ME POUR IT IN THERE!!!!!!!!!” But I refrained, because I realized that not everyone has to do things in a jiffy. Although life would be smoother for me if they did.

Could I be discovering the root cause of my lifelong tendency to procrastinate? My mother was an energetic woman, and her frequent urges to hurry her offspring along found many expressions. Another in this growing list was “chop chop”. “Dinner’s ready! Wash your hands, chop chop” meant for us to drop what we were doing and head for the sink. That this was to be without delay goes without saying. Apparently, “chop chop” was common in the military during the two World Wars, and I suppose my mother could have picked this phrase up from those who had been in the military during those years. There are sources that tie the phrase to Chinese, but we were were almost certainly 1,000 miles from anyone from China.

Not all of my mother’s expressions were designed to hurry her children along. We are coming out of a very cold winter hereabouts. How cold has it been? My mother would have said it was “colder than Billy Blitzen”. I never had any idea who (or what) Billy Blitzen was, but I new he (or it) was really cold. “Colder than Billy Blitzen” was a regular part of outdoor temperature measurement in my youth. I tried looking it up online, and can find no reference to the expression. But a fellow who shares his surname with one of Santa’s reindeer must surely be cold.

My job occasionally sees me pulling a refrigerated trailer. These have big swinging doors which must, of course, be open for loading or unloading. When the doors are open while I wait for the loading or unloading process to begin, I hear my mother’s voice in my head asking “Are you trying to refrigerate the whole house?” Which was a question occasionally asked of me as I stood in front of an open refrigerator while deciding what I wanted to eat or drink. Or, more commonly, hoping that something would appear there that wasn’t there the last time I opened the refrigerator, and taking way, way longer than two shakes to do so. I will confess to adopting this one in my own life. With 3 kids in my family, my own refrigerator door was open at least 33% longer than it was with just my sister and me in my mother’s kitchen. This expression is probably not as uncommon as the others. And, for the record, I have always suspected that a household refrigerator might very well be able to cool an entire house to a reasonable temperature, given enough time and a decent air distribution system. But I am sure that was not the question Mom was asking me.

Another question she would occasionally ask was “Were you raised in a barn?” This was usually in response to some teenaged etiquette failure, or more often, some teenaged slovenliness. The question gave me all kinds of ideas for sassy answers, but I am proud to say that I avoided almost all of those temptations. For the record, I was not raised in a barn. Although I have occasionally given my Mrs. reasons to inquire.

I am sure that everyone reading this has memories of his or her own mother’s unique expressions. And hopefully they make each of you smile a little bit just as I do when one of my Mom’s expressions rings in my imagination. Now it’s time for you to share your contributions in the comments. And make it snappy.

Author’s photo of himself, his mother and his little sister from the summer of 1965