Telling you what...

So, it occurred to me that I should say something about Texas phrasology and how we speak and why this blog is called, "I'll Tell You What."


It's a Texas thing to preface everything you say with one of these phrases. Allow me to illustrate:

Lady Sister Girl: I'll tell you what, that Britney Spears is a mess.
Sister Woman Friend: Well, I'll tell you something else, she's the Messesseppi River.
Lady Sister Girl: Well, I will say one more time, she is a mess in a dress.
Sister Woman Friend: Mmm, mmm, let me tell you something, she'd better get it together.

So, it goes like that. (I stole Messesseppi River from Michael.) We do this sort of announcing that we are going to tell you something very important to which you should listen, as if you wouldn't be listening unless we did the set-up.

I also grew up saying that I was 'fixing' to do something and, in fact, when I first moved to Ohio for graduate school I used that term and some fool said to me, "What's broken?" and I honestly didn't know what the person was even talking about. It was like this huge nonsequitur that came out of nowhere - broken? nothing's broken - no one is even talking about something broken. Well, let me tell you, you just said you were fixing to go to the store so I thought something was broken. hhaah, hhhaaah, haaahhhah. Very funny.


My father said lots of funny things - if he was hungry he'd say, "I could eat a hairy dog's leg" or "I'm so hungry I could eat a hairy dog's leg." If a waitperson came to pick up his plate and he had eaten everything on it and the waitperson asked how everything was, my father would say, "Oh I just choked it down." My father sometimes told me that he'd forgotten more about something than I'd ever know. He didn't ever say it meanly, just if I was getting a little uppity or thinking that he was some sort of uncultured lump who didn't know anything he'd say it then, "Paige I've forgotten more about the opera than you'll ever know. I didn't just fall off a turnip truck."