if your nose is ___

[dragonlady7]

jokes, never dad jokes, the whole cultural phenomenon of dad jokes is lost on me, corny jokes are for moms only

via https://ift.tt/3jasvvj

The other day Farmsister repeated one of the funny weird little aphorisms she and I grew up with. Our mom was full of these weird little sayings. Some of them, now that I’m out in the world, it turns out everyone’s mom says. Some of them not so much.

“Oh,” Farmsister said to her daughter, “if your nose is itchy, that means you’re gonna kiss a fool.”

Farmkid, who spends a ton of time with Grandma, frowned at her. “What?” Farmsister repeated it, and Kid was like “Uhhhh, that’s not how the saying goes. It’s if your nose is cold you’re going to kiss a fool.”

They argued back and forth desultorily about it, but as it happens, Farmsister calls Mom every day since Dad died, and so she made her daily phone call, and said, “Oh, Mom, what is it that your nose does when you’re going to kiss a fool?”

“Oh it’s cold,” Mom said.

Farmsister contemplated that for a moment. “Are you sure it’s not itchy?”

“Oh,” Mom said. She thought a moment, and said “I’m pretty sure it’s cold.”

Just now, several days later, Farmsister was puttering around putting away dishes in the kitchen, and I was leaned on the counter petting cat with my foot while BIL poked at his phone in the chair nearby. “OH,” she said.

“What,” I said, alarmed.

“If your nose is BLANK,” she said, “you’re going to kiss a fool.”

BIL, baffled, stared between the two of us like we’d grown four heads. “What?”

“Itchy,” I said. “If your nose is itchy you’re gonna kiss a fool.”

“THANK YOU,” she said, and picked up the phone to call Mom before realizing it’s really too late in the day. “I’m gonna tell her that tomorrow.”

Yeah, she always said itchy when we were kids.

(It’s a joke setup, because of course you’re going to use this as a punchline the next time it comes up that you kiss someone. It’s a very old joke setup. Mom has a lot of these partial jokes, because her father was apparently hilarious, but died in 1969, and Mom doesn’t remember most of the whole jokes.)

(If anyone knows the joke to which the punchline is “Takes kidneys!” when someone does something boneheaded, that would solve a fairly deep-seated family mystery.) (Your picture was not posted)

Comments

[krait]

Well, I went looking round the Internet, and "takes kidneys" or "that takes kidneys" seems to be a folk-saying synonym for 'that takes guts' [courage], or 'that takes determination.' (Possibly with a suggestion of 'more determination than wisdom.')

Some examples I found (CTRL+F for "kidneys" to find the relevant bits):

*A comment in this thread from 2012, which runs:

Those guys have been handed everything and don't know shit about real life except to buy a new one. And I have said it before: "Anybody can buy a new one but it takes kidneys to fix an old one. And have it work." Then these office boys will call me up and say "What should I do now?" I git tired of saving their fat from the fire.


*One reader's 'life lesson' in this National Post column from 2013:

I’ve learned there’s no accounting for differences of opinion. The term “Two Solitudes” used to refer to English and French Canada, but could just as much refer to readers of The National Post and The Toronto Star. For every Canadian who admires David Suzuki, and many do, there’s someone else who’s praying that Stephen Harper gets four more years, on top of the two left in his current term of office. Takes kidneys.


*An astrology article from 2018, which describes Tauruses:

It's really true that they are stubborn and forceful, but you don't get that reputation by being a mental wimp. You get it by being a badass Taurus with a bone to pick. And they know how to work that bone — and that takes kidneys. I mean brains.


*This book discussion blog from 2019, where someone reacts to a character willing to take on a dangerous task with:

A: That, as we used to say, takes kidneys.

Seriously, though, I have to admire her, even though if she’d said anything else I’d be down on her like a ton of bricks. She came here to do exactly this job, so if she refused to try, I’d be mad. At the same time, given what she went through in the last 24 hours, it’s kind of amazing that she can even contemplate it.

[dragonlady7]

This is fascinating. Another person searched and found a whole forum thread about a variant of people tapping their heads and saying "It's all in the kidneys!" which seems to be stemming from a stand-up or vaudeville routine or something about a mental patient.
https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-this-joke-from-its-punchline/675021/3

[krait]

Interesting! They don't appear to be related phrases, but it seems like it would be easy for someone to mix them up - neither one appears to be common today, so I'm sure there's lots of people out there with a vague memory of a kidney-related catchphrase their mom/uncle/teacher/coworker used but a very fuzzy recall of the details. (And indeed, looking back at the 'takes kidneys' examples I found, the Taurus one seems like it might be making a deliberate reference to the vaudeville joke!)

I keep thinking of Ursula Vernon's Digger, and the tribe that refers to the liver, not the heart, as the source of emotions. :D Kidneys must have been a lot more symbolic to our [great-great] grandparents than they are today...