Tenth Muse

Feed the Pony

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

This past week in New York, there were so many phrases and jokes coined and/or shared.  There was also an almost embarrassing amount of Bride Wars quotes flying about.  And that’s not even in my top 10 chick movies. Top 15, at best… maybe 20.

Anyway, one of the newer colloquialisms shared with me last week was “feed the pony”.  The first time Statia said it, I’ll admit, I laughed but thought, “I think I get it…”  Who wants to be the nerd that doesn’t get it?  You might be thinking, “I don’t get it”, too — so here’s the scene:  We noticed someone with an extremely short skirt. Like really, really short. SHORT.  And Statia said, “Whoa, feed the pony.”  You can see where she’s going with it, but Kathy had to thoroughly spell it out for me back at the hotel:  “Dude, that skirt is really short.“  “Yeah, it’s so short if she bent over, you could feed the pony.”

{light bulb}  So, that was new. I embraced it.

This, of course, lead me to think of similar references: going commando, going freebird, flashing, etc.  My maternal grandmother used to say “You’re taking my picture.” which I find totally charming.

As a child, my grandmother was my best friend. I spent many nights at her house (she lived across the street) and I’d often shower there in her mid-century green parrot bathroom and then run around her house in my jammies.  Jammies for me consisted of dad’s old t-shirts or flowered flannel nighties popular with the 6x crowd in 1979.

We’d watch The Love Boat or T.J. Hooker, make dinner and occasionally, my grandmother would have an un-fancy beer, in a proper pilsner glass, like a lady does.

I was big into tumbling as a kid, so I’d often do back bends or somersaults, cartwheels, handsprings, what have you, in the middle of her living room while we watched TV.

[Aside, she called the living room the "J Room" because every person in our immediate family had a name that started with J, except the dogs -- they were named after booze.]

I would cavort and carry on and every so often, my grandmother would say, in her vaguely uppercrust way, “Zsoelle!” — She always pronounced my name with a soft J, like Zsa Zsa Gabor — “You’re taking my picture.”

It took me a few times before I understood what she meant — I was flashing her.  She’d remind me to go put on some panties like “a young lady”.  And I would (with the days of the week on them, naturally) and the cavorting would resume. But I always remember that… “You’re taking my picture.”  So when Britney and her pantie-dropping posse were all over the rags with their business like a billboard, I found “You’re taking my picture” especially amusing.

Come to think of it, my grandmother also used another charming phrase: “You’re winking at me.”

I guess I was running around without underpants often enough to warrant two reprimands.

If only she knew…