The woman in question smiled
broadly, but before she could speak
to offer a snippet of her own regional
locution, my mother piped up with
the answer: “She must be from Scot-
land,” Mom said, “because the Scots
have terrible teeth!”
Indeed, the woman was from
Scotland, though the truth did not
set my stepdad free from his embar-
rassment. My mother has always
had a tendency to blurt out informa-
tion that other people would keep to
themselves. It’s not that she’s mean—
far from it. It’s just that, like a blender
without a lid, she doesn’t have the
proper tool to keep her thoughts from
spraying all over the room.
Alas, this is something of a heredi-
tary trait in our family. Her mother
also provided uncensored insights to
people. When I turned 16, she gener-
ously offered to pay for me to get my
nose fixed. Thanks anyway, Grandma!
People always laugh when I tell
them stories about my family’s sil-
ver tongues, but they invariably have
their own tales. So we at RD decided
to collect readers’ favorite stories.
Some of them are accidental zingers,
like my mom’s. Others are language
mix-ups that produce a sort of sweet
word salad. Think of them all as a
tribute to helpful moms everywhere—
a verbal Mother’s Day gift! We even
gave them a name: mamapropisms,
after the inimitable literary character
Mrs. Malaprop. Come to think of it,
she was probably a mother too.Not Dressed for Success
I always sat in the front row during
rehearsals of the church choir, but
when it was time for our big perfor-
mance, I was sent to the back row.
Dejected, I relayed my woes to Mom.
She said, “Honey, it wasn’t because
you can’t sing. It’s because you don’t
know how to sit in a dress.” Some-
how, that made me feel better.
—Ernestina Holt Plainfield, IndianaTwisted Sandwich Wisdom
My mother would always say
“Mind your PBJs” when
she meant to say “Mind your
p’s and q’s.”
—Kathryn Schuller
Port St. Lucie, Florida108 may 2019
Reader’s Digest