Whatever do you mean, honey?

Friends who have come to the U.S. from various cultures tell me they need a guide and a guidebook for their first years in our country…and especially in Texas. Some of my friends who have lived in other parts of America say the same thing.

If you are from India, our grocery stores offer a very different shopping experience, for example. My granddaughter, who is visiting Egypt this summer, said the same thing about shopping for groceries in Alexandria. She also fell in love with the mesmerizing aromas of the spice department, where these tasty ingredients are sold from containers, piled high with condiments we’ve never heard of.

A friend from the Philippines, after immigrating to America, found years of training in the English language left her still needing translation of the idioms we here in Texas sprinkle liberally into our day-to-day speech.

What follows are some examples of Texas idioms we use regularly, not realizing non-native speakers may have no clue about what we’re saying:

One of my aunts (I’ll omit the “loving” descriptor in her case, for obvious reasons) used to “scare the bejeezus” out of us kids when she threatened, “I’m gonna jerk a knot in all of you if you don’t get this house picked up!” Think of someone outside of Texas who overheard this!

First of all, I’ll admit…I have no idea what “the bejeezus” is, what it looks like or where it resides in our bodies, but I’ve heard about it all my life and surmise it’s something we’d rather not spit out, expel or otherwise allow it to escape our bodies.

What happens when a crazy aunt threatens to “jerk a knot in you?” Again, no clue, but if you’ve ever dealt with a knotted shoelace or tied Scout knots for a badge, you already know this just sounds brutal.

And, my crazy aunt really must have been out of her mind if she thought four kids under age 10 could literally lift her house from its foundations, as in “pick up the house.”

Same for someone announcing, “They’re gonna pick me up at six to go to the movies.” Think of the images a foreign visitor must envisage, a grown man picking up another grown man and carrying them out to the car. Surely there’s an easier way to get someone to go to the movies with you?

That same crazy aunt, lovingly or otherwise, used to caution us, “Don’t get too big for your britches.” Since most of us girls wore dresses, was she cautioning us about wearing underwear that was too tight? I never knew!

In Texas, when something is uneven, like a picture hung on the wall, we call it “caddywompus” or “cattywonkus.” And, if we revisit a site from our past, we refer to it as “our old stompin’ grounds.” Picture, if you will, someone and their friends gathering in front of an ice cream store or the site of a long-gone record shop, jumping up and down and stomping on the sidewalk or dirt surrounding the site.

Texans, it seems to me, are more religious than most when it comes to idioms. As an example, instead of saying, “I’m so sorry,” they say, “Bless your heart,” as if you have some kind of heart condition that needs prayer -- and maybe grief and sadness is heart-breaking, which doesn’t mean this vital organ is actually broken or isn’t functioning properly.

We don’t change television channels with a remote control, we use “the clicker,” and in one case, control of the clicker was so important to one Texas man, his wife demanded that the undertaker bury their TV remote with her poor dead husband. As she told the undertaker, “He wouldn’t look natural without the clicker in his hands.” (Of course, she immediately bought a new, 70-inch Smart TV when she received his life insurance proceeds a few weeks later).

Since Texans are innovative and resourceful, we find “stick” in many of our folksy sayings -- like getting “the short end of the stick” when you’ve been treated unfairly. However, I never quite figured out which end of the stick the short end might be…and if someone wasn’t very physically beautiful or handsome, a charitable neighbor might describe them as “beaten half-silly with an ugly stick.” Yet, can anybody tell me how one feels if they’re “half-silly” and where, if you needed one, could you find “an ugly stick.”

I had an uncle who grew up on a farm near Corsicana who joined the Navy during WWII, but after the war was over, some of his farm sayings carried over into the rest of his life…and one of his “real humdinger” sayings, usually after his first bite of dessert was, “Man, that’s so good, makes you want to slap yo mama.” Even after all these years, I wonder if the rest of farm life was so violent?

So, put yourself into the shoes of an exchange student or newcomer to this country who speaks English as a second language. Are they “fixin’ to” be really confused? I say, “No wonder immigrants think English is such a difficult language.”