"You don't have to shovel rain." - My grandfather when asked why he moved the family from Wisconsin to Oregon.
"How are you ever gonna keep a job if you can't keep juice in a cup?!"
I was 9 years old
My grandmother used to say: if you expect your good deed to be reciprocated, you’re not actually doing a good deed.
She said it in dutch, so I hope it’s an decent translation.
I've heard this one put similarly: "If you're looking for something in return, even your good deeds are an extension of your selfishness."
I don't know about 'iconic' but I once heard my grandpa say "I'd eat 5 feet of her shit just to see where it came from." and that mental scar will probably stay with me the rest of my life.
Is this a military thing? One of the characters in Generation Kill says this in the first episode.
Possibly? I think he might of been in the military but I've never heard him talk about it.
From my grandmother: "Essen! Essen!" (Eat! Eat!) Followed quickly by "You need to lose weight! You're getting fat!"
When he was talking about turning 100: "I can't see, and I can't hear, but I can still eat so I'm not going to die."
He did indeed make it to 100.
It's not so much a catch phrase, but words that I will always remember.
My grandmother was a WWII vet who came home and vowed to be a pacifist. She raised 7 kids before going back to school. She was at Kent State in 1970, working on her masters degree. She happened to be on the commons when bullets started flying.
She died ~2002. When we were cleaning out her belongings we came across a brown stained handkerchief in a plastic bag along with some news clippings. The clippings were her letter to the editor of the Akron Beacon Journal describing her experience on May 4th. The hanky had a little handwritten note that said "this is the blood of Allison Krause. Shed for many. May 4th, 1970".
My grandmother was an amazing woman who did so many great things after the war. You could easily write a movie about her accomplishments. But out of everything she did, the words on that little note made the biggest impact on who I would grow to be.
“I’ve raised enough kids, I’m not raising grandkids too”
And that’s the story of how I never had a relationship with my grandparents
When he wanted to remind us to turn off lights, he'd yell "save electrodes!"
When he was splitting wood with the "kabunger" (splitting maul) he'd yell "katabuungie!" When he swung.
When he'd drop wood on his toe he'd yell "GOTDAMMITSONOFABITCHGRAAH"
Some grandparents say "goodbye", my grandparents always departed with "Don't take any wooden nickels!"
My maternal grandfather said "By Jove" a lot.
My paternal grandfather had a lot of sayings: "here's me head, me arse is coming", "she walks with a bit of a run", etc - typing them out a lot had to do with the way people walked. There are more though.
