Text: “Fuck around Fuck around go home crying”

Context: My dad, 60, white, living in Washington State, learned this in college, it was his set design teacher’s favorite saying. It’s about when you’re painting and it doesn’t look quite right so you try to fix it but it goes badly and you keep fixing it and fixing it but it gets so bad that you’ve gone completely away from what you wanted. You just spent way more time trying to fix something then you did just continuing to paint. So this saying means: Stop, just stop, leave it, go do something else, go find another area to paint. My dad brought it home and it became a part of the family vernacular. 

Analysis: This is an example of folk speech, a saying that is meant as a warning or advice.  It is unknown if my dad’s teacher created this saying or learned it from somewhere else, but since he learned it in this context that will be analyzed. Artists are known for being non-traditional, alternative, or off the beaten path. This saying reflects that, in its use of tabooist language, swear words. My father and his teacher might have been drawn to it because of this subversion. It is a saying meant to teach and my father learned it in an educational setting but it is not appropriate for kids. I think that is part of the fun, many sayings are all ages but this one ensures that the space is adult only, in the context my dad learned it in that these college kids are adults, and art is a serious business. The repetition also makes it fun to say, excluding the need for any rhymes and making it easier to remember.