Taking time off from column-writing last week (no, the shovel hasn’t returned) gave me a little time to think about things I love.

And we all know what that means: The Word Nerd strikes again!

It sounds rude and funny. Of course I love this sign.
Photo from FunnySigns.net.

Letter-writer Karen Woods of Flippin (home of my favorite church sign) contributed a wonderful idiom in her letter printed on the Voices page Tuesday: “licked the red right off my sucker.” I hadn’t heard that one before, but I did find it in The Boys from Old Florida: Inside Gator Nation through a Google Book search, in a quote from Herbert Jackson Youngblood III: “The first day I had to go through the drills with Jim Benson, it was like somebody had licked all the red off my sucker.” I’ll guess that means he was plumb wore out.

There’s also that song from Little Jimmy Dickens from back in the ’60s, “Who Licked the Red Off Your Candy,” as well as a quote from Adam Sandler’s Mr. Deeds (not a Sandler fan, so I hadn’t seen it).

I’m not saying it was Homer … but it was Homer.
GIF found on giphy.

This is one more reason you don’t take candy from strangers, y’all: It might have already been licked. (Ewwww.) Also, don’t Google phrases like “licked the red off my sucker” without SafeSearch on. (Yeesh. I need to bleach my eyes … and I didn’t even click on Image Search.) It was the inflatable sheep episode all over again (part of a welcome-home plan for a friend who’d been embedded in Iraq; a sheik had offered two sheep and a goat for her … she was worth at least a camel).

After my last column on Southern idioms, several readers sent me some of their favorites, such as adding “Honey” to the ends of names, like “Sheryl Honey.” That happens all across the South and elsewhere, and in places like Baltimore it gets shortened to “Hon” … and then embroiled in a trademark battle when someone decided to trademark the common expression. The owner of Cafe Hon canceled the trademark in late 2011 after protests and dropoffs in sales … and an intervention by Gordon Ramsay.

I felt like the cat staring down the bird that day. Bonus points if you know where those arms on the bird came from (one of my very favorite movies).
Image found on cheezburger.

Sometimes “Honey” is sweet and pleasant, a term of endearment between people who love each other, or maybe for customers at a diner. Sometimes not so much for women. I remember not so fondly a visit with my first adviser after I had changed my major from political science to radio/TV news just before my second semester in college. He looked at my proposed schedule for the next semester that included a required lab hour for my physical science course, then looked at me and said in a patronizing voice, “But Honey,

you can’t take 19 hours!”

My reply: “Sweetheart, yes I can. Look at my GPA.” Yep, I was sassy then, too.

I got through that semester with a 4.0, and found an adviser who wasn’t condescending. She was also my brand of weird, and that helped. (And in a strange coincidence, after grad school I ended up teaching the remainder of that first adviser’s classes for the semester after he died on spring break.)

When I was a kid, I remember my grandpa telling people on the phone that he’d “be by directly.” There was never a definite time involved, but before too long, he’d head over there, usually coming back with a mess of whatever he traded something from their garden for. There was always a lot of corn, squash and onions that could be traded for some eggs or some pork.

I miss the days when they’d be by directly.

Grandpa actually pronounced the whole word, as opposed to many now who say “dreckly.” As a word nerd, I have to wonder if the people who say that mean “directly” or “with a great amount of dreck” (that’s rubbish, if you’re not sure).

Enunciation can really make a difference sometimes, you know.

Another word I heard a lot when I was a kid and still use: “blinky,” as in blinky milk. It never fails to confuse at least a few people, though the use seems fairly common throughout our region. It’s when milk is juuuust starting to sour, so you might not want to drink it, but you can still use it to fix up a pan of cornbread (no sugar unless you want to incur my wrath, especially if you make it in a cast-iron skillet … the skillet did nothing to deserve that). My grandma always used to say that you call it blinky because the smell makes you blink a little.

That, folks, is probably blinky milk.
Image found on HuffPost Canada.

That use might have come along due to an old British definition of the verb “blink”: to turn slightly sour, such as from a witch’s curse. We do have a lot of people around here with Scots/Scotch-Irish ancestry (including myself in that Heinz 57 melange that is my family), so I wouldn’t doubt it.

And if anyone lost power in the latest series of frog-stranglers we just had, they might be dealing with some blinky milk of their own. That and a bunch of dead frogs. (You’re supposed to gig those frogs, not strangle ’em, so you can fix up a mess of frogs’ legs and get fuller than a tick.)

Let the frogs keep their legs, please.
Image by Kevin Clark found on Defenders of Wildlife.

Grandpa always said you should never waste good frogs’ legs. But no, I don’t want any … or squirrels … or rabbits … or …

There’s something I’ve learned over the past several years working on the Voices page, and it’s that there is nothing I can do to please some people. They’d rather spend their days complaining than being kind and thoughtful. (The Golden Rule? What’s that?) They want special treatment, and anything less will get them all bowed up. (See, you knew I’d bring it back to words.) They want to fight, and they don’t care with whom.

It seems they prefer to get ugly, as if being polite and considerate—just a little common decency—would lessen them. Insults, lies, selective thinking … that’s all part of their toolbox, and all that they will willingly share.

I wonder if adding a mirror to that toolbox would do any good … or maybe a persnickety grandparent or two …

A housekeeping note for those using the online Voices submission form: We’ve been having issues lately (since our site redesign, anyway) with error messages after people submit their letters. Some letters make it through (regardless of the error message, and sometimes in multiples) while some don’t. If you’re not sure your letters are going through, you can always email them to our Voices address, voices@arkansasonline.com. Remember to put your name and town on the letter, as well as a daytime phone number, especially if you don’t check your email often, or you prefer to receive a phone call.

And don’t be ugly. My grandma is not beyond coming back from the grave to smack you. I’m sure she’s got a fresh bundle of switches cut.

Someone’s being trolled, anyway.
Screenshot from @AHamiltonSpirit’s Twitter page.

And one more note. I saw this tweet the other day, and it just seemed so appropriate. But then the orange one pumped his fists while arriving at a 9/11 memorial event in Shanksville on Tuesday.

I think Trump may be trolling God.