"Mildred"

[Jim Parish]

A friend of mine has asked me to pose a question to the list. She writes:

"In our family when I was growing up, when a person was being too much
of a slowpoke (especially but not exclusively when playing cards), one
got called 'Mildred', as in "come on, Mildred!" I don't know if this is
peculiar to our family or not, but it would be interesting to find out
if it isn't. (There is no one amongst my relatives named Mildred, to the
best of my knowledge.)"

Does anyone else know of this usage? Its origin?

Jim Parish

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