When I was real young I would ask my grandad if he knew what was for dinner, he’d usually respond with “Shit On A Shingle.” For the longest time I thought he didn’t know and was just responding to the question with the least appetizing thing he could think of.
Decades later, working on the road, there was this lady who’d cook up huge dinners and sell plates for like $5 so you didn’t have to leave the lot to get food. One day I asked her what was on the menu and she said “Shit On A Shingle” and I replied “Oh, so you don’t know yet?” and she said “No, I’m making Shit on a Shingle” and I learned that it’s a real dish. It’s not bad. Genuinely the worst part of shit on a shingle is how it looks.
A little tangential, but when I was very little my parents had a dog and one day they “sent him up north” and then shortly after we got the dog I remember as my childhood dog. Obviously I spent most of my life thinking the dog had passed and they did they “we sent him to a farm upstate” thing. I mentioned it in passing when talking to my mom awhile ago and it turns out they really didn’t like the dog but a family friend that lived in the woods up north loved him so they gave him the dog.
That’s gotta be the best possible version of this phenomenon.
“the world isn’t fair”
There’s an upside: We can make it fairer. Emoji unrelated.
When I was a kid and took vitamin supplements my dad would remind me to take them by saying “don’t forget your vitameatavegamin.” I thought he made it up but it turns out it’s from an old-ass TV show.
It’s from “I Love Lucy”. Probably the most memorable episode for me. Lucy is doing a commercial for this dietary supplement, and she keeps getting drunker with every take, since it’s an alcohol based tonic.
That and the licorice factory are two of the most memorable episodes
One of my parents would frequently say “That’s good stuff mannered” like when eating tasty food which I thought was just a southern folksy thing
Turns out it’s from a malt o meal commercial from the 80s and it’s “good stuff Maynard” like the name
Looking from 40 years onwards it’s a kind of creepy commercial too.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
a less appetizing sounding but similar dish to the one song that I can never get out of my head: Chicken on a raft
Yeah my grandma was notorious for the shit on a shingle line too for dinner and I didn’t come to learn it was an actual dish until I was an adult too.
my grandpa had the same joke but my pa said ‘bet’ and cooked it up for his ass one time. i agree, not actually that bad
mine is ‘suck eggs’ which i thought was a euphemism for sucking balls but was in fact a thing toothless old folk used to do because other proteins were tough chewing
TIL, I gotta go tell my grandmother about this!
TIL
I read this and thought this was a joke to convince gullible morons like me that shit on a shingle is not just a figure of speech, was bracing to feel shame when typing it into a search engine. What do you know. Chipped beef on toast.
Holy shit… My mom used to make that for us when I was a kid and my dad would call it ‘shit on a shingle’ and I thought he was insulting her cooking!
I don’t know, but that’s a great story!
