My mom told me this wise saying when I was young, and had trouble getting my chores done. They always seemed like they took so long that I would just not do them until I had to be forcibly told. My mother explained to me that all chores are boring and tedious and the hardest part is getting started. In other words, once you’ve started a job you’ve nearly finished because the hardest part is getting over.
Tag Archives: proverb
A Stitch in Time Saves Nine.
My informant first heard this saying from her grandmother when she was a child. She said that her grandmother was teaching her to sew using the baste method, which uses one long stitch over a piece of fabric in order to hold the fabric together for the main stitches which are smaller. My informant told me that along with the reasoning for using this method, her grandmother used the phrase, “A stitch in time saves nine.”, meaning that using this method, even though it seemed time-wasting and tedious, would save time in the ling run by keeping the the fabric in place and preventing mistakes when sewing the small stitches.
The person who originally said the phrase was Benjamin Franklin. My informant’s grandmother likely read it in his Poor Richard’s Almanac. Benjamin Franklin wrote the almanac under the pseudonym “Poor Richard” between 1733 and 1758. My informant’s grandmother used the phrase in a situation that actually involved a stitch, but the saying can also be applied to a number of situations.
Take Care of the Field, and the Field Will Take Care of You.
My informant was my baseball coach last year, and he used this saying at a time when our team, who was usually very good, wasn’t doing so well. We were uncharacteristically making a lot of errors, and we just couldn’t seem to get the ball to bounce our way when we were hitting. One day after practice my coach noticed that the field and batting cages had not been worked on or cleaned. He brought us all together and annoyed he said, “How about we get our jobs done and take care of this place. Take care of your field and the field will take care of you. Let’s get some good karma going and turn this thing around.”
This is a saying that my informant likely made up himself. That was the first time I had heard the saying, however, I have recently heard several versions of it, namely, “Be good to the field and the field will be good to you.” While I don’t believe in things like karma, I can see the logic in the statement he made. By taking care of the field, dragging and watering the dirt, making sure there it is smooth and there are no holes or big rocks in it will greatly decrease the chances of a ball hitting a rock or a hole and taking a bad hop, which in turn causes errors. So it’s simple: Take care of the field, and the field will take care of you.
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
My informant first heard the phrase from her husband about twenty years ago. The two of them were in their car in the parking lot of a shopping center looking for a space to park in. The parking lot was quite full, and my informant was getting impatient, as they had been driving around looking for a space for some time. Finally the husband came upon a parking space deep in the back of the parking lot. My informant did not want to have to walk that far to the store, so she told her husband to continue looking for a space closer to the store she wanted to go to. At this, the husband told my
informant, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”
The husband used this analogy to explain that even though the spot they found was not the bast spot, continuing to search for a closer spot that didn’t exist at the time was not wise because there were no guarantees that they would ever actually find that closer spot. In other words, the spot they had was better than the prospective closer spot that wasn’t available.
Annotation: This phrase can be found in the Living Bible Version of the Bible in Ecclesiastes 6:9.
If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.
My mom repeatedly told me this phrase throughout my young childhood. It was usually when my sister and I would be fighting or have an argument. Sometimes I would be so angry with her, for what ever petty reason, and we would just go back and forth yelling and calling each other names. To get the initial arguing stopped, and curb the name calling, my mom would often sternly exclaim, “ Stop it right now! You know you’re not supposed to talk like that! If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”
When my mom would say that to us our arguments would quickly come to an end. It just made sense, when she would say that I would quickly think to myself of anything I could say to my sister at that moment that was not malicious. Many times I would have to remain silent, but occasionally I could come up with something nice to say, and after that fighting just seemed stupid.
Annotation: This phrase can be found in the movie Bambi, by Walt Disney Productions (Which makes me think that’s where she got it from).