You Don't buy the Cow
... and other old fashioned sayings that had a lot of truth in them
I’m old. Like, really old. I even have… grandchildren. A whole bunch of them, actually.
And, being old means that I have heard a lot of things. And one class of those things is, or, are, ‘sayings’. When I was a kid there were a lot of things that my mom, my dad, my neighbour’s mom, would say. Even my neighbour’s dad!
And being old means that you hear these young whipper snappers come along and tell you that all of your old sayings are, well, old. Old, dried out, useless, meaningless, no longer fit for purpose, ready for the trash heap of history.
And being old means you sit on your front porch and give these whipper snappers a little what for. So, here goes… a whole series of old sayings and why I think they were, and are true. Although since these young snots don’t understand them, this will mostly involve explaining them.
Wait till your father gets home
Men and women were not created equal. Vive la difference and all that.
But, specifically here, the issue is that women are designed to be around the kids… all day. Every little spill, every little accident, the woman is there.
Meanwhile the father is out hunting, or farming, or selling insurance. He doesn’t have to deal with the 200 little pecadillos that happen every day. He is reserved for… the great crimes. The loud, deep voice of doom
Spare the rod
Note for the younger crowd: ‘the rod’ was not necessarily a ‘rod’. It could be a belt, a brush, a wooden spoon, or the palm of the hand. Amongst others.
And the rest reads ‘spoil the child’. It has become popular to hear, nowadays, ‘I wasn’t spanked and look out how I turned out.” To which most of us old folks reply, “Yeah, thanks for making my case.”
Children should be seen and not heard
I wrote a whole post on this. Feel free to read it. Quick partial summary: “We all are told to hear God, and children are very specifically told to ‘hear’ their parent’s commandments. This cannot be done if we are talking.”
If you want to cry, I’ll give you something to cry about
The fancy modern word for this is ‘emotional regulation’. It might seem incredible to the current generations, but it is possible to self-regulate both how you act and how you feel. And the best time to teach this is when they are very young.
The way this technique worked, back in my day, was that a child would suffer some disappointment, perhaps not getting a cookie, or having to share their toy, and they would choose to let the world know of their displeasure. Loudly. Their parent would then inform them that, if they desired to cry, the parent would give them adequate justification.
IOW children who failed to control their behaviour and, I would argue, their emotions, would be physically chastised. What this led to was the ability to… control their behavior. And the emotions behind their behaviour.
It’s actually my toy
Perhaps most of my audience haven’t heard this one. This is a Dad saying from long ago. The situation is that two kids are arguing about whose toy a given toy is. You know, pulling it back and forth, crying, screaming, hitting each other over the head with it from time to time.
And the dad steps in and says, “You are both wrong. It’s my toy. I bought it, paid for it, and am the Lord High Muckity Muck of this house.” And then he follows that with…
If you’re going to argue about it, neither of you get it
Which brings us back to emotional regulation. The emotions themselves and how we choose to act on them. This is a ‘you can’t have nice things’ argument.
Because there is the truth of the argument (maybe your sibling really did just rip it out of your hands while you were playing with it) and then there is how you chose to respond.And if you chose to respond in a way that set off the ‘noise alarm’ for Daddy… then the punishment is… you lose the toy.
You don’t buy the Cow
I once got a millennial (or one of those younger generations) really, really mad at me over this one. The irony is she asked me, and I told her my answer would be offensive. Which didn’t seem to help. Oh, well, go figure. The expression is still true.
Oh, wait, what, you don’t know this one? Well, the full quote is, “You don’t buy the cow, if you’re getting the milk for free.” And it means that if a women is willing to sleep with a man, he is less inclined to marry her. Which kind of goes in the face of all of modern dating, which insists that sleeping together (read: fornication or adultery) is a mandatory step in the road to marriage process.
Conclusion
I kind of randomly went through a bunch of old fashioned sayings… but I think that the ones I ‘randomly’ chose have some common themes. Emotional and behavioural regulation. I can’t tell you how many people who, when asked why they did something, replied with a statement of their feelings. But part of growing up… a part we seemed to have left out nowadays… is realising that your feelings shouldn’t control how you act. They shouldn’t even control how you feel.
Thank you for reading Von’s Substack. I would love it if you commented! I love hearing from readers, especially critical comments. I would love to start more letter exchanges, so if there’s a subject you’re interested in, get writing and tag me!
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Von also writes as ‘Arthur Yeomans’. Under that name he writes children’s, YA, and adult fiction from a Christian perspective. His books include:
The Bobtails meet the Preacher’s Kid
and
Arthur also has a substack, and a website.
Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,
Von
Related to Kipling's "Gods of the Copybook Headings."
Though when you're talking about old sayings, the first thing that came to mind was a couple of rhymes I learned from my great-grandmother:
To bed to bed, sleepyhead.
Let's wait a while, said slow.
Get the pan, said Greedy Nan
Let's eat before we go!
And another:
Beans, beans, the musical fruit!
The more you eat, the more you toot!
The more you toot, the better you feel!
Let's have beans at every meal!