Ciphering The Things My Mama Says

I love my mama. She's a very simple, homegrown kind of lady that comes from the backwoods of SW Louisiana (and SE Texas later on). She says things that my kids get a kick out of sometimes without meaning to get a reaction. It's just how she is. She uses a lot of phrases that they call "hillfolk talk". I  never realized it was hillfolk talk. I don't consider myself to be hillfolk, but I do say some of the things my mama says. Sometimes, you have to think about them a while before you 'get it'. I'm going to cipher some of them for people that might not hear any hillfolk talk otherwise.

"I wouldn't fool with him/her til

the water got hot."

Tonight, while waiting for my water to get hot, I thought about this phrase and realized I've never heard anybody, but us use it. I'll explain. See, when you live in an old house where the plumbing isn't really up to snuff (that means updated), sometimes it takes a while for the hot water to come through the pipes from the heater to the faucet. That's the case in my bathroom in the lower 40 (the back end of my house). You're waiting for the water to get hot. It doesn't take long, but it takes a minute or two. In the old days, I guess this would be waiting for the water to get hot on the fire instead of coming through the pipes because a lot of places didn't have modern conveniences back then.

The "fool with" means mess with...hassle with..put up with..tolerate something or someone. That gets used a lot just by itself. So if you say that you "wouldn't fool with her til the water got hot", that means you wouldn't tolerate her even for the short amount of time that it would take for your water to get hot. (a minute or two)

This has been Lesson One in How To Speak Hillfolk.