The proverb from RK goes along these lines:

“_______ has more _______ than Carter has pills,” for example “That guy’s got more issues than Carter has pills.”

This proverb comes from RK’s father, who would use it pretty often back when RK was growing up. The proverb is used to describe a huge quantity, with knowledge of Carter’s enormous pill storage being deemed as common knowledge in the late ’70s and early ’80s. When asked why Carter had so many pills, RK said that he assumed it was about former president Jimmy Carter, who had a tumultuous term as president, dealing with many wide-scale issues. RK was young during his presidency, being the first one that he could remember, and he assumed that on top of the issues he was dealing with as president, an enormous drug addiction was part of them. However, recently, RK discovered that Carter’s Pills actually had nothing to do with Jimmy Carter and instead were about Carter’s Little Liver Pills, with people seeing so many ads for them that it seemed “he” had endless pills.

This proverb is absolutely a product of its time, with both Jimmy Carter and Carter’s Little Liver Pills being something that peaked in the American interest in the late ’70s. Today, this proverb would only make sense to other people who had grown up in this era. The fact that RK did not know about Carter’s liver pills makes the use of this proverb even more interesting as RK was a passive bearer of the proverb, accidentally conditioning himself to think that President Carter had a pill problem which had stuck in his subconscious until only a few weeks ago. This conditioning occurs when one interacts with a proverb, and its illusion of collective wisdom can be extremely destructive when taken in the wrong context, but thankfully, RK’s opinions on Jimmy Carter’s drug use aren’t particularly harmful to anyone. Should this proverb have instead made RK think about an entire cultural group, perhaps, even if by accident, it could have led to the perpetuation of harmful biases against certain people, especially as the proverb came from RK’s father, someone who’s opinion RK values. While this mix-up was humorous in this context, it also shows how powerful folk speech can be in influencing one’s core beliefs when they are at a young age.