You can’t go backwards, you can only go forwards.

Phil said he uses this phrase when something bad has happened or you wish you could change something.  He does not know where he first heard it, but he says it reminds him of his child hood.  Phil is German and grew up in a very “German run” household.  His father was “the man of the house” and very strict.  The basic mentality that he grew up with was you just kept going on no matter what happened, which basically captures the meaning of the proverb.

As Phil said, the meaning of the phrase is basically you have to keep going no matter what.  You cannot change the past, so you two choice are to try to hide from life (which rarely works) or gut it out and move on with your life.  I see this proverb as a positive idea.  To me it gives hope that what’s done is done and you can move on with your life.  Whenever my dad would say it to me when something bad had happen, it would remind me that life does go on.  What I find interesting is that Phil sees the phrase in a more negative light.  When he was a child he was not allowed to hide from his problems ever.  He something went wrong, his father basically told him to deal with it.  For many people this may seem very harsh, but for German culture this is quite normal.  The stereotype of Germans as a tough, cold people can sometimes be very true.

I also find this proverb to be very interesting because it captures a very American view point of life.  Americans have been said to be future directed people.  Americans focus more on what’s to come, new technologies, planning out their lives, than many cultures do.  This proverb captures that mentality in one statement.

J.F.P. “Just Fucking Play”

On my volleyball team, we used this saying when the refs were being unfair or the other team was playing dirty or the coach was being an asshole. It let us remember the forget everything else and just fucking play.  I first heard it on my high school team in Ventura.  I heard it again when I played club volleyball for USC.

Julie has played volleyball for most of her life.  She did not encounter this acronym until she reached high school.  This is probably because it uses mature language.  Julie usually self identifies as Mexican, but in this instance she identified as a volleyball player.  Knowing this phrase identifies her further as a volleyball player, because no one outside the team is supposed to know what it means.  I find it interesting that Julie said it is only supposed to be understood by the members of her team, but she encountered it on two different teams.  It is interesting how this acronym has spread, especially considering that the two teams that Julie was a part of were completely unrelated.

This acronym identifies the group even further because it is purposely keeping people out.  Julie said J.F.P. is used when the team is upset with the other team, the ref, or even their own coach.  The fact that they are even attempting to exclude their own coach shows how intimate of a group they are trying to form, including only the actual player on that specific team.

The phrase itself represents the general mentality and stereotype of the athletic world.  Athletes are generally seen as tough people, who will gut anything out to win the game.  This is the idea of J.F.P. As Julie said, it is meant to remind the player to forget everything else and just play to win the game.

Annotation: The Nike advertisement “Just Do It”.  This phrase can be seen in commercials, on billboards, in stores, and many more places.  It is a Nike trade mark that has very similar phrasing and meaning to J.F.P. They also both refer to athletics.

Everything’s hunky dory

Phil said that this was a phrase that his mother told him.  She told him that if he was ever kidnapped or if anything bad happened and he was able to call her, he should say everything’s hunky dory.  That way, she would know to contact the police.  He said it means everything is okay.  That way the bad people would not think that he was giving away any information, but at the same time his mother would know that something was wrong.

This is a piece of folk speech that identified them as part of that immediate family.  The purpose of the phrase was to exclude others.  Whoever the bad people were would not know the meaning of the phrase.  I do not think this phase would be as effective if it was used today.  People no longer really use the phrase hunky dory, so someone might suspect something if you did.

The phrase hunky dory can be considered a piece of folk speech itself.  Although it is not used very much anymore in the English language, most people still know what it means.  Its basic meaning is every things okay.  I researched it a little bit and I found two possible origins of the phrase.  One was that the main street of Yokohama was Huncho-dori Street. So, a sailor on shore leave would feel that everything was okay when they reached the main street.  Another possible origin is that the word hunk comes from the Dutch word honk, which means goal.  So, when you reached your goal everything was okay.  This explains the hunky part but does not give an explanation of where dory came from.