“I hope he ain’t gonna hurt his back a’gin, but you can’t tell him nothing.”
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Overheard: snippets of conversation I overhear in Southern Appalachia
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Wait a minute
That ought read
you CAIN’T tell him Nuthin.
The downfall of most people is that they refuse to recognize their limitations. They keep trying harder and harder things until they get to the one that sets them on their backside and they have to start over. Ladders don’t always reach the top.
Please take this for a joke, have you ever heard the last words of a redneck man? It’s hey y’all watch this!
I kinda of think maybe that might be a bit more accurate as ” can’t tell him nothing about some things. ” Like maybe taking carry of himself? As a guy myself, I’d say a man who has self-respect has to defend it. It is, I think, easier to lose than to regain. Having it and keeping it often means to us fellas taking risks others judge too great. And sometimes they are more right that we were and the price is too high. Then we just have to soldier on with the consequences. The higher ones standards of conduct are, the more important it all is.
One of the best things one can do for children is to be sure they get opportunities to choose and sometimes fail while learning that failing does not mean one has become a failure.
Off my soapbox now folks.
I fit right in this category. Have had two back surgeries and still haven’t learned a thing.
As a new bride(60 years ago) my mother-in-law gave me this little bit of family knowledge. “You can always tell a Davis. You just can’t tell them much”.
Sue,
I love this saying and it can have a variety of meanings like stubborn, confidence in one’s abilities which doesn’t always represent reality, and we used “know it all” as a descriptive phrase to describe some of those who could not be told anything. Wonder how many of us have heard close to the same statement from our better half!
I have used the term “you can’t tell him/her nothing” myself. It is very descriptive of certain people. I try not to be one of them.
Dennis Morgan
Flat Creek Rattler
James Dobson in writing about boys said if they do something and get hurt they don’t think about the danger. They just think they must have done it wrong and will try it again another way. I guess most of us keep on thinking like boys even when we are old and grey. My wife says that I think I’m still 20 something even 50 years later.
Haha ,can relate to everything shared ❣️ …and most of the time with a few exceptions “he” was right ☺️
There was supposed to be one of those smiley face things at the end of what I wrote to Miss Cindy. I also left out that us men can’t help being like that, we were just born that way.
I want everyone on Tipper’s blog to know that I love to tease and joke, I don’t have any intentions of hurting or making anyone mad.
Miss Cindy,
I love that brilliant twist to the usual “A man’s GOTA do…”
That’s what I heard earlier this week as my Florida-born
husband was shoveling snow here in Austin, but I was
thinking, “Well, if you say so, but you are GONNA hurt
your back.”
I have heard the can’t tell him anything many times in my life usually they were talking about me. I sure wish I had listened, I now have several bad discs and pay dearly for those things I did now.
For Miss Cindy’s a man is gonna do what a man is gonna do, I found out early in my marriage my wife is not happy unless she is fussing at me. I think she feels like that is part of her job as a wife. Don’t know how the rest of you women feel about this, but I try my best to give her plenty of things to keep her happy!
Something happened after I went to bed last night, I woke up a year older this morning! My mother never fell to tell me each year about how bad the weather was the night I was born. Thunderstorms and maybe some tornadoes. I was born at the Anderson, SC hospital.
The last time I heard “You can’t tell ’em nuthin'” a late friend was referring to his highly educated adult nephews, who sometimes wouldn’t take his practical advice about farming–plowing, removing a downed tree in the roadway, driving the 4-wheeler too fast on narrow trails. Two of the nephews were doctors and one a retired airline captain!
Thank you tipper for celebrating Appalachia.
I am Scottish, maybe some of my kin folk live in Appalachia.
I have loved bluegrass since I was a little bity feller.
Again thank y’all for what you area doing here on blind pig and the acorn.
Have a Great day. I’ll be sure to stop back by. We’ll see ya.
I’ve heard that many times over the years. It’s a man thing to do things they know will hurt them and do it anyway. Along with that saying you can add….A man’s gonna do what a man’s gonna do!!