Yesterday I did some half-hearted moaning about life in one’s thirties; today there’s another phenomenon that seems to creep up with age.
It’s well known (or well alleged) that women end up becoming like their mothers; I think the process is accelerated if you become a mum yourself.  Facing tiredness or shock, whatever the cause, the brain seems to think the easiest option is to revert to saying what you heard when you were growing up.
Earlier on in the summer, I managed to cut one knee quite badly. Between shock, disbelief, and a fair amount of pain, it became difficult to say what I had hurt where.
But one thing I knew: I was ‘in the wars’, a family phrase which I hadn’t heard or used for some time, but that dropped back into my mind when trying to work out what had happened.
Sure enough, when I phoned my mum on our return, the first thing she said was, “Oh dear, have you been in the wars?” I didn’t know whether to feel comforted by the reference, or confused about being returned to an 8-year old state (or equivalent), where mums need a good stock in trade of phrases to say when something goes wrong.
(This was probably better than her asking if I had ‘happened’ my knee – another phrase based on my brother saying that he had ‘happened his finger’, which then became used for other situations of minor injuries.)
The funny thing was, commenting to Dan that I was ‘in the wars’ made me look at the phrase at face value. In comparison with soldiers coming into the line of fire, in Iraq or Afghanistan, an accident at home hardly counts. And yet, in a child’s eyes, a big fall or something else upsetting needs a suitably big statement to go with it.
So, feel free to use it for your own mishaps. Or send in your own equivalents. Life has its tumbles, and if language has its comforts, one of them is having a good set of sayings to get you through a situation and back to some sense of continuity.
I also was brought up on the phrase “in the wars.” Not one that I’ve used on my kids yet as I’m hoping (coward that I am) to avoid protracted conversations about what war is. And why.
If we appeared crying and injured or sniffing and bleary-eyed as children we were always asked “what’s worst with you?” The instant and unconditional sympathy implied in the question was always a comfort, as was the permission to complain. It’s not a phrase I’ve heard people using recently. Could we bring it back?