"I didn't know ...

[Jonathan Lighter]

HDAS has a few of these also, in print from ca1970 but sometimes referring autobiographically to WWII.

  JL

George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: George Thompson
Subject: Re: "I didn't know ...
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I'm just getting back to real life after a vacation, and am catching
up with email. Sorry if this seems to be bringing up ancient
history. . . .

If I recall, one of my college roommates, born in Connecticut,
probably in 1941 as I was, when perplexed would not know "whether to
shit or wind his watch".

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: Wilson Gray
Date: Friday, August 11, 2006 11:46 pm
Subject: "I didn't know ...

> whether to shit or go blind!"
>
> I've been using this expression since I learned it ca.1959 in the
> Army. The expression was new to *me,* at the time, but I got the
> impression that it was an expression had been around for years. Yet,
> to this day, people are still asking me what the fuck it means.
> So, it
> occurred to me to google "shit or go blind." I was shocked to get
> fewer than 800 raw hits, about half of them having to do with people
> wondering what the expression means.
>
> WTF?
>
> -Wilson
> --
> Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have
> found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be
> imposed upon them.
>
> Frederick Douglass
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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