February 11, 2018 – “Come-to-Jesus meeting”

I was in the middle of mundane housework with my brain on autopilot when the above phrase popped into my head, and made me smile.

         A dear friend, God rest her soul, had a way with words and phrases.  She was the consummate joke teller at her place of work.  She told jokes, she collected jokes, and she was wonderful entertainment.  Being my neighbor, she’d stroll over after work often to tell me her joke of the day.  It was always a great hoot or laugh.  However, the above phrase came about when her then young daughter had been caught red handed doing something wrong.  I was visiting my friend when she received a phone call from her mother who told her something her daughter had done.

         Down went the phone with a crash as she said, “When she gets home we are going to have a ‘come-to-Jesus’ meeting,” then immediately grabbed her cigarette pouch and lit one up.

         Of course, my interest was piqued, but the scene was usual for my friend, a single Mom with an unruly daughter.  Part of me felt my friend would have given up smoking earlier if it hadn’t been for the stress of raising her daughter.

         This was the first time I heard that phrase, come-to-Jesus meeting, and it wouldn’t be the last time.  It is a perfect phrase for the situation when you want to toss up your hands and scream, yet you decide to have that heart to heart talk with your child to re-address a problem.

         Another time this friend’s car broke down two days in a row with the same problem that was supposedly fixed by the garage on day one.  She had a ‘come-to-Jesus meeting’ with the garage mechanic over that one, too.

         She may have been Baptist, but she was using this phrase to mean the moment one has to face the facts or come to terms with reality, get serious and put your foot down. I understood it completely and I never think of using it myself which is a shame because it is a great phrase.

         This friend also had another great phrase she used often in the summer time:

“Sweating like a whore in church.”

         When I heard her use the phrase, “Bless her little heart,” which she said with an edge, I knew we were both on the same wavelength when viewing humanity.

Trust me, she didn’t talk like a hick that often as she would use a word here or there or a stand-alone expression to get a point across.  Yet, my friend put on a thick Southern twang when I had any Yankee visitors in town in order to get laughs. After my Mom met her, she called her a ‘hoot’ of a good friend.

I have fond memories of some of her other favorite phrases:

“Pitch a hissy fit”

“Fixin to”

“Hankerin”

“As fat as a tick”

I’ll leave you now with one of my favorites which you’ll find in a future blog:

“Over-the-shoulder boulder holder”

Until then, I borrow another southern phrase  

from another southern friend,

I hope you are in high cotton  till then.