Talking Southern – Straighten Up and Fly Right

     In the grocery store recently, your compiler saw a young mother struggling with an obstreperous young boy, and his heart was warmed to hear her say something his own mother had said time after time to him and his siblings two generations before: “Straighten up and fly right this very minute.”  The attractive young woman was well-dressed and had a lovely Southern voice tone, which got your compiler to thinking this might be a Southern phrase, a thought he had never considered before.

     As with many of the entries in this series, your compiler cannot be certain it’s of Southern origin; however, he heard plenty of Southern mamas and not just a few Southern dads use it in the course of his growing-up years.   While he has had very little exposure to Northern parents in his sixty-two-year life span, he has never heard one of them say it.  Nor can he imagine any one of the ones he knows saying it.  Therefore, he includes it in his listing of Southern sayings even though he cannot prove that assertion any more than he can fly to the moon (or across the back yard.)

     What does it mean?  Exactly what it says.  It’s a parental shot-across-the-bow, and it means “get in line right now, or else!”  Your compiler’s late mother often used it with other colorful phrases, depending largely upon the degree of trouble her offspring were stirring up, and sometimes just on her general level of patience or lack thereof.   Your compiler smiles to remember some of the things she said to him in this vein:  “Boy, if you don’t straighten up and fly right, I’m gonna pop you so hard your clothes will be out of style when you stop rolling!”  That would get a young boy’s attention — bell-bottom jeans not in style?  he would wonder.

    Or she might say, “I’m gonna wear the filling out of you if you don’t straighten up and fly right, right now!”   Your compiler wasn’t sure what that meant, but almost always felt like his filling was worth keeping, and usually modulated his behavior rather considerably upon hearing it.

    Or she might say, “Son, if you don’t straighten up and fly right, I’m gonna tan your hide till it won’t hold shucks!”  Your compiler really didn’t know what that one meant, and wasn’t sure why anyone would want to hold or elsewise retain corn shucks anyhow, but was astute enough to know that a smart-aleck response was probably not wise under the circumstances, and that whether he ever intended to hold corn shucks or not, he’d probably better tone things down a good bit, because his mama was not one to mess around.

     Straighten up and fly right.  I wish that more mamas would say it.  I wish that more mamas would enforce it.