Ah….reading many of these jogged my ancient memory more than I realized. Here are just some of the favorites I remember regularly hearing my dear old south Alabama-bred Dad saying when I growing up….and yes, the man supposedly loved me????!?!
-“You’re so stupid if you had a brain you take it out and play with it!”
-“You’re so lazy you need to carry a cat under your arm to breathe for you.”
-“You’d complain if you were hung with a new rope”. (This one never made any sense to me - until I just finally just looked it up!)
-“You’d get lost finding your way out of a paper bag!”
-“You’d forget your head if it wasn’t tied on!”
-“You look like something the dog dragged in and the cat refused to play with!”
-“You’re so skinny you could stand out in a rainstorm and miss every drop”!
-“Looks like that person fell out of the Ugly Tree and hit every branch on the way down!” (Said when a particularly unattractive person passed by - thankfully this one wasn’t directed at me??!”)
- “Oops - must’ve got my tongue wrapped around my eye tooth and couldn’t see what I was saying” (said when whenever something he was trying to say came out garbled or tongue-twisted).
- “Looks like someone must’ve left the damned gate open!” (Said when trying to drive across a busy lane of traffic with no gap between the oncoming cars).
-“Hurry on Buddy, hell ain’t half full, yet!” - (Said whenever someone would recklessly speed past Dad on the highway).

Although Dad was definitely the more prolific of the two in the stupid sayings department, my good ol’ northern bornMom occasionally gave him a run for his money, as well:
- “That guy is poorer than Job’s Turkey”. (Said if someone wasn’t financially well off, I always thought it was weird as I could never figure out why poor Job even HAD a Turkey since I thought they were supposed to be an American-only thing??!)
- “If you don’t get going soon, you’ll find yourselves coming back!” (Said whenever we kids were dawdling or procrastinating).
- “It must’ve gone down your Sunday throat” (said whenever one of us accidentally swallowed something wrong and started coughing or choking).
- “No need to go around your elbow to get to your mouth!” (Said whenever someone was making something harder than it actually was)
-“You better get busy using your head for something besides a hat rack!”

As denigrating as some of these sayings may sound now, they were always something just said in jest - no one ever took any of them seriously or personally. Mom and Dad are both long gone now - but what I wouldn’t give to be able to hear even one of these ridiculous saying emanating from either of their mouths again. All is not lost however, as I do admit that there has been more than one occasion when I have inadvertently caught myself actually tossing a few of these old colloquialisms out at MY own kids - so some of these stupid sayings still live on????!