We older people need to learn something new every day…Just to keep the grey matter tuned up.

Where did “Piss Poor” come from? Interesting history.

They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot. And then once it was full it was taken and sold to the tannery…if you had to do this to survive you were “Piss Poor”. But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn’t even afford to buy a pot… They “didn’t have a pot to piss in” and were the lowest of the low.

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn’t just how you like it, think about how things used to be. Here are some facts about the 1500’s. Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June. However, since they were starting to smell, brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water!”

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying, “It’s raining cats and dogs.” There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That’s how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, “Dirt poor.” The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery. In the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entranceway. Hence: a thresh hold.

(Getting quite an education, aren’t you?)

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetable. And did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme: Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.” Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special.

When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, “bring home the bacon.” They would cut off a little to share with guests. And would all sit around and chew the fat.

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom; holding a wake.”

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, saved by the bell” or was “considered a dead ringer.”

And that’s the truth.

Now, whoever said history was boring!!! So get out there and educate someone!  Share these facts with a friend. Inside every older person is a younger person wondering, “What the heck happened?”  We’ll be friends until we are old and senile. Then we’ll be new friends.

Smile, it gives your face something to do!

Bubba and Billy Joe were on vacation, walking downtown, window shopping, and they see a sign on a store which reads, “Suits $5.99 each, shirts $1.99 each, trousers $2.49 each.

Bubba says to his pal, “Billy Joe, Look here!  We could buy a whole gob of these, take ’em back to Alabama, sell ’em and make a fortune.  Just let me do the talkin’, ’cause if they hear your accent, they might think we’re ignorant, and not wanna sell that stuff to us”.

Now, I’ll talk in a slow Texas drawl so’s they don’t know we is from Alabama.”

They go in and Bubba says with his best fake Texas drawl, “I’ll take 50 of them suits at $5.99, 100 of them there shirts at $1.99, 50 pairs of them there trousers at $2.39.
I’ll back up my pickup and.”

“The owner of the shop interrupts, “Ya’ll from Alabama, ain’t ya?”

“Well…yeah,” says a surprised Bubba.

“How come ya’ll knowed that?”

“Because this is a Dry-Cleaners.”

There I was sitting at the bar staring at my drink when a large, trouble-making biker steps up next to me, grabs my drink and gulps it down in one swig.

“Well, whatcha’ gonna do about it?” he says, menacingly, as I burst into tears.

“Come on, man,” the biker says, “I didn’t think you’d CRY. I can`t stand to see a man crying.”

“This is the worst day of my life,” I say. “I’m a complete failure.  I was late to a meeting and my boss fired me. When I went to the parking lot, I found my car had been stolen and I don’t have any insurance.  I left my wallet in the cab I took home.  I found my wife with another man and then my own dog bit me.”

“So I came to this bar to work up the courage to put an end to it all, I buy a drink, I drop a capsule in and sit here watching the poison dissolve; then you show up and drink the whole thing!”

“But enough about me, how’s your day going?

1. If someone in a Home Depot store offers you assistance and they don’t work there, you may live in Minnesota.

2. If you’ve worn shorts and a parka at the same time, you may live in Minnesota.

3. If you’ve had a lengthy telephone conversation with someone who dialed a wrong number, you may live in Minnesota.

4. If you measure distance in hours, you may live in Minnesota.

5. If you know several people who have hit a deer more than once, you may live in Minnesota.

6. If you have switched from ‘heat’ to ‘A/C’ in the same day and back again, you may live in Minnesota.

7. If you can drive 75 mph through 2 feet of snow during a raging blizzard without flinching, you may live in Minnesota.

8. If you install security lights on your house and garage, but leave both unlocked, you may live in Minnesota.

9. If you carry jumpers in your car and your wife knows how to use them, you may live in Minnesota.

10. If you design your kid’s Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit, you may live in Minnesota.

11. If driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow, you may live in Minnesota.

12. If you know all 4 seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter and road construction, you may live in Minnesota.

13. If you have more miles on your snow blower than your car, you may live in Minnesota.

14. If you find 10 degrees ‘a little chilly’, you may live in Minnesota.

15. If you actually understand these jokes, and forward them to your entire Minnesotan friends & others, you definitely live in Minnesota.

• “If you want to know how old a woman is, ask her sister-in-law.”  (Eva Gabor)
• “Old age comes at a bad time.” (Ed Sullivan)
• “Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what happened.” (Stevie Wonder)
• “Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you are aboard, there is nothing you can do about it.”  (Golda Meir)
• “The older I get, the more clearly I remember things that never happened. (Mark Twain)
• “I’m at that age where my back goes out more than I do.” (Phyllis Diller)
• “Nice to be here? At my age, it’s nice to be anywhere.” (George Burns)\
• “First you forget names, then you forget faces, then you forget to pull your zipper up; then, you forget to pull your zipper down.” (Rob Reiner)
•  “You spend 90 percent of your adult life hoping for a long rest and the last 10 percent trying to convince the Lord that you’re actually not THAT tired.” (Princess Grace)
•  “Old people shouldn’t eat Health foods. They need all the preservatives they can get.” (Bob Hope)
• “At my age, flowers scare me.” (George Burns)
•  “It’s like you trade the virility of the body for the agility of the spirit.” (Ed Sullivan)
• The years between 55 and 75 are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.”  (T.S Elliot)
• “At age 20, we worry about what others think of us… at age 40, we don’t care what they think of us… at age 60, we discover they haven’t been thinking of us at all.”  (Ann Landers)
• “When I was young, I was called a rugged individualist. When I was in my fifties, I was considered eccentric. Here I am doing and saying the same things I did then, and I’m labeled senile.” (Milton Berle)
• “The important thing to remember is that I’m probably going to forget.” (Martin Scorsese)
• “We don’t grow older, we grow riper.” (Pablo Picasso)
•  “It’s paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn’t appeal to anyone.” – (Andy Rooney)
•  “The older I get, the better I used to be.” (Lee Trevino) 
• “I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a lot more as they get older, and then it dawned on me — they’re cramming for      their final exam.” (George Carlin)
• “Everything seems to slow down with age, except the time it takes cake and ice cream to reach your hips.” (Elizabeth Taylor)
• “Grandchildren don’t make a man feel old, it’s the knowledge that he’s married to a grandmother that does.” (Norman Vincent Peale)
• “When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it’s a sure sign you’re getting old.” (Mark Twain)
• “You know you are getting old when everything either dries up or leaks.” (Dennis Quaid)
• “There’s one advantage to being 102, there’s no peer pressure.” (Adam & Eve)
• “There are three stages in man’s Life: he believes in Santa Claus, he does not believe in Santa Claus, he is Santa Claus.” (Leon Phillips)
• “Looking fifty is great — if you’re sixty.” – (Joan Rivers)