Say What?

We all have sayings that are unique to us. Lord knows I have them. A bunch. I love it when I’m around someone who says things that catch my attention. I thought I’d share some of mine, some of my family’s, and some I have picked up along the way.

I titled my podcast “Here’s What We Know with Gary Scott Thomas” because during a meeting that involved a lot of moving parts, I tried to break it down with: “Well, here’s what we know,” whereupon someone declared, “I knew you were going to say that, cause you always do”.

That caused me to reflect, and I couldn’t disagree. I think a strength of mine, and sometimes a weakness, is to listen to various arguments and try to find the truth in each one of them. My sons will weave a tale that involves some event that may anger, frustrate, or confuse them. I try to be attentive and then lay out what I see are facts. Then see if we can look at the situation through another lens. That may seem like it should work all the time, but trust me, it doesn’t, and sometimes blows up in my face spectacularly because I linked point A to point B to get to point C, and overlooked that I didn’t actually include point B and went directly to point F.

If nothing else, it gave me a title for my podcast.

We all have met that person who will find fault in anything. My response tends to be: “If I gave you a gold brick, you’d whine about the color”. I run, but not fast. I describe my speed with: “You would time my 100-yard dash with a calendar”. When people who have listened to me meet me and say I don’t look like what they expected, I reply, “Yeah, the less you see me, the better I look.”

My father had some great ones. If I asked for money, I would hear “Son, if they sold Florida for a nickel, I couldn’t buy a tangerine, all I could do was stand by the side of the road and shout what a deal, what a deal!” As a child, I didn’t look anything like my dad, and he would say, “Son, I love you like you were one of my own”.

My wife will watch me as I show my ineptness at a task with “So, how’s that working for you, slick?” When she fails, which is rare, I am bold enough to ponder, “Uh, did you mean to do that?”

My nephew floored me one day as we watched his son pull a knob off in his truck, and he calmly said, “Buddy, you could break an anvil in a sandpit using only a Q-tip”.

The snarky comments are genetic. My son commented to me once: “I think it’s pretty bold of you to try it the way most people would never try, and it’s cool that you are willing to learn from your mistakes”, which led to my other son spout “Ha, you think he’d be a genius by now”.

My father-in-law will ask me some of the most bizarre questions ever. Like “how many windows are in that building?” I used to stare at him in disbelief, but I came up with what I think is a gentle response: “Steve, I have no idea, but I am honored that you would think I would know”.

What are some of your favorite sayings? Share them with me, whether they are yours or ones you’ve heard. I’ll leave you with how my Uncle Holly used to say goodbye: “Okay, well, I’ll let you get back to your rat killing”.