Pete, Mustard & My Stars
Now that my children are older, I find that I have actual thoughts again. Prior to now, I've been so consumed in child rearing that honest to goodness thoughts were not possible. For the last 16 years, I've been running purely on instinct. With my newly rediscovered abilities, I've begun taking note of the strange things that come out of my mouth.
Things like:
"That doesn't cut the mustard, mister."
"For the love of Pete."
"Oh my stars."
"What on earth?" and "why on earth?"
And honestly, even I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.
It, obviously, isn't possible to cut the mustard given its semi-liquid state,
so why on earth (oops, there I go again) would I tell my son that what he has (or hasn't) done isn't possible? Because it is more than possible - it is a REALITY that he has not cleaned up his room properly as evidenced by all of the empty gatorade bottles and dirty dishes lying about and the ever growing mound of dirty, wet clothes in the corner.
And for the love of Pete, who is Pete? And why do we care about his love, anyway, whoever she is? And why is she so compelling that she would be our ultimate source of inspiration? Especially given that we don't even know her name. Wouldn't it make more sense to say, "For Suzy!" as we raise our arms and march into battle? That just sounds better than, "For the love of Pete!" wouldn't you agree? That just doesn't sound very warrior worthy in my opinion.
I love saying, "oh my stars" and I'm not sure why. I don't think I own any stars.
I do remember reading about some scam thing where you can pay $50 and buy a star or name a star and receive a Gen-U-ine certificate to boot. But I've never done it, so in saying "oh my stars" I suppose you could say that I am perpetrating a fraud; maintaining the pretense that I am a star owner and all. And for the love of Pete, why on earth would I want to do that? Because that just doesn't cut the mustard.
HOLY CRAP-- I never thought of it that way.
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