Talking Southern – To Your Health (Part 1)

Any follower of Talking Southern knowns by now that Southern speech is full of color.  There is no  exception to this when Southerners talk about their health.  All the phrases denoting health that come to mind are quick ways of painting a pretty realistic picture, without giving one of those long rundowns on one’s ailments which cause the hearer to want to flee, and which is what your compiler’s dear, departed Brooks, Georgia, friend, Helen Hardy Woolsey, used to call, an “organ recital.”

     When someone is exceptionally well, on top of things physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and in every other conceivable way,  he or she is really in prime condition.  When someone asks the Southerner in such delightful shape how he or she is doing, the inquirer might be liable to hear, “I’m fine as a frog’s hair, thank you!” in reply.

    Your compiler knows not where that phrase comes from, but supposes that if a frog truly has any hairs, that they are almost certain to be so fine as to be nearly invisible.

     A twist to this phrase is occasionally heard when someone is truly self-actualizing (as Mr. Maslow put it in his famous Hierarchy of Needs), when someone is truly on the mountaintop taking in the glorious panorama of life.  “I’m fine as a frog’s hair split twice!”   That, friends, is mighty fine indeed, and the short, simple phrase conveys as much meaning as a full paragraph of more conventional but less vivid prose.

     Next down the line from “fine as a frog’s hair,” is “fair to middlin’,” or sometimes just plain “middlin’.”  Both mean approximately the same thing, although someone professing to be fair to middlin’ is likely a shade friskier than someone who is just plain middlin’.   The first phrase, in modern language, means something like, “I feel pretty good, thank you!”   The second – plain old “middlin’” – approximates the less enthusiastic, “I’m allright.”

     So if you cannot be fine as a frog’s hair, your compiler hopes you are at least fair to middlin’, and that you’ll stay that way until at least next week, when we shall discuss the ever worsening conditions of “tol’able” and “po’ly,”   Being tol’able can mean several things, from pretty good to barely hanging on, as we shall see, but to be po’ly is indeed to be pitied.  

     Please stay tuned for next week’s column, and keep fair to middlin’, if not fine as a frog’s hair, as your attitudinal and conditional goal.