I have been told by a few people - enough Thoreau. Okay - for a while. But, as that great American hero, Rocky the Flying Squirrel, used to say - "Now here's something we hope you'll really like":
See you in church.
The following section is written in Runyonese:
I am speaking with a friend on the phone. We are getting up to saying goodbye, and he says to me, "Now you say your favorite line."
"What is that?" I am asking.
"You know."
"'May I have another piece of pie?'"
"No."
"See you in church?"
"This is it."
I do not figure this particular friend would notice that when I say goodbye to someone, "See you in church," is what comes out of my mouth. I know a lot of people know it, but I do not think he is one of them. He is not that type to notice something like this. I am not remembering that I ever say it to him. But, apparently, I say it a lot.
It is roughly 27 years earlier. I am raising my evalovin' daughter. Sometimes we watch videotapes. She loves Shirley Temple movies. I do not want to spend a lot of time on who Shirley Temple is. If you do not know, you can google it. In short, she is a child actress in the 1930s and 1940s, cute as a button, smart as a whip and brave as a lion, to use up my quota of cliches for the day. She is the star in a lot of films playing a girl in peril, often at the hands of her own family. She is usually portraying an orphan. She is so famous that she is considered for the role of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, although it is probably never as close as she and her mother hope as she is not a progidy for her pipes but for her inflection and overall adorableness. Probably her most famous movie is Heidi (1937) and after that Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938). She retires from movies in 1949, but does a little television in the late '50s and '60s (thank you IMDB), tap dancing her way to heaven in 2014 at age 95, no doubt accompanied by Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, who has come down to earth to guide her upstairs to the pearly gates.
Just as Shirley Temple, the child, cannot get enough of The Wizard of Oz books, my daughter cannot get enough of Shirley Temple, the child actress. My kid has curly blondish hair as a young girl and resembles Shirley a little. But, I do not think this is the attraction. I never see her pretending to be Shirley. She just thinks they are great movies as does her evalovin' father. At least the few I see are. I can not myself believe that I will sit there and watch them over and over with her, but I really enjoy them too.
In Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Shirley plays an orphan with a singing talent. When her Uncle Harry, played by the great William Demarest, most famous for the role of Uncle Charlie on My Three Sons, thinks he cannot make money off of her, as she is faking not being able to sing, he drops her off at Aunt Miranda's house. Miranda is much nicer, but not the showbiz type. Harry is kind of a ne'er do well, and a bit lacking in morals, though not entirely evil. His wife, Melba, is just a bitch. When Harry leaves the house after handing Rebecca over, he turns to everyone and says -- "See you folks in church."
This may not seem like the funniest line in the world to you, but, when Henry says it, he is being sarcastic, because you know you are not about to run into Henry in church on a Sunday morning when he is likely sleeping it off. As he steps out on the porch, he trods on a loose plank, which rises up and hits him square in the face. Hysterical. Cannot see it enough.
Anyway, one day, I am leaving someone, or maybe saying good-bye on the telephone - the melon that contains my brain will not release the exact circumstances, and I say, "See you in church." Or maybe "See you folks in church," like Uncle Henry did. I find it very funny, because you are not about to see me in church either. It occurs to me that I say this to many people over the last 26 or 27 years. I am not a big fan of tag or catch-lines, though writing this, I realize I have a few. I remember thinking that I hate the character in the movie It's a Wonderful Life who goes around saying "hee haw" all the time. I cannot imagine why anyone would enjoy something like that, but I will be damned if I do not do it too.
Well, I try to stop, but it does not work. I say it over and over and over and over. I can not stop. I try several times. But, I say it even to judges, if I am not careful, and other times where being colloquial is a little out of place. I am not saying this is alarming or that it harms me or others in any particular way, but occasionally I am a little concerned that people will find it tedious (other than my evalovin' girlfriend, who finds everything I do tedious and rarely funny).
But, people say it back to me so often and others just laugh. People now say it to me as much as I say it to them. One friend sends emails to me ending with "SYIC." Some kids find it hysterical and cannot wait to say it to me before I say it. I may be wrong, but I think most people like it (except my evalovin' gf, who . . . ).
I am not the evalovin' creator of the phrase. I tell people this, but they are not listening. The writer is likely Don Ettlinger and/or Karl Tunberg, who write the screenplay for Rebecca . . . or Kate Douglas Wiggin, who is the writer of the original novel, may they all rest in piece. I am not planning on losing a Sunday researching this. I just find it funny and adopt it. Now, I'm known by it, at least by some people. Apparently, even by people who I would not think would ever notice.
And that is that.
Piece of cake
I think I was 25 when I first visited Europe. I was a backpacker and stayed in hostels or really cheap hotels. But, when I went to Sweden I found myself suddenly alluring to women, which, trust me, has never happened before outside of my evalovin' noggin. You can release your breath and take the look of disgust off your face as I don't plan on describing any of it. It had to be the dark hair - relative to the Swedes - and an American thing, because I've met other men who've gone there and experienced something similar. I don't know if this is still going on there, but it was a rather well-known effect when I was younger, and in fact, a religious studies professor (you read that right) in college actually advised all the young men in my class to go to Sweden before they married. Imagine a professor saying that today. Poof, he'd be gone. I realize all this background isn't really necessary for the story, but it just felt good to reminisce about it and I guess I wanted to say it out loud because pretty much nobody is looking now and memories are sweet. Anyway . . .
I was walking down the road after a romantic encounter with my backpack and a car suddenly stopped. A young woman, maybe a few years younger than me, made her ex-boyfriend stop the car to pick me up. Yes, it sounds like a movie, only the protagonist in real movie would look more like Cary Grant, but that was exactly what happened. I ended up spending a few days with her and her friends (her former boyfriend was not at all put out), all roughly around my age, and most of whom spoke English to one degree or another, which they had learned mostly from tv. The first night we were sitting around in their living room and they were asking me questions about Americans and I was asking them about topless Swedish women (I did say I was about 25). At some point, in response to something or other, I blurted out, "piece of cake." In other words, "it's easy." Well, let me tell you, Robin Williams or Richard Pryor would have been happy to get this response. They were literally (not the "literally" which means figuratively, but the one that means - they actually did that) falling out of their seats. "Piece of cake," they kept repeating. And they repeated it for the next four days until I left. It's a purely American expression. I've learned a bit about it since then but decided not to bore you with its derivation except to say a wonderfully amusing poet I grew up on - Ogden Nash, figures into it. They even taught me to say it in Swedish, which I never forgot, although I do not know how to spell it - something like "en bate calkye."
I have always said that if "piece of cake" became an expression in Sweden, it was solely due to my having blurted it out over there. Of course, how would I ever know if it happened? Well, skip ahead to just last year, about 33 years later. I had recently started communicating again with a friend in Sweden I had met on my next trip to Europe a year or so later to the former Yugoslavia, but had lost touch with for decades. I wrote her my "piece of cake" story. She wrote back that it had become an expression there but in English - not Swedish. If I could find the card she wrote, I'd quote from it, but, I delayed 2 weeks posting this while I looked and absorbed snarls from my evalovin' gf that if I'd just straighten up I could find things.
Now, shut up, I already know what you are thinking. I can't know for sure that I am actually responsible for people saying "piece of cake" in English in Sweden. But, it does seem strange to me that I always thought it would catch on there and it did. They did not have the expression when I visited and do now. Maybe I'm not responsible. Could be they all got it from a movie or a tv show. I'm going to assume I am the reason because it makes me feel good and who does it hurt? Let me have it. It's not like I'm claiming to have cured cancer.
And that is that.
Evalovin'
I notice I also say evalovin' a lot. Maybe I write it more than I say it. I usually append it to my girlfriend of 8 million years - as in, "my evalovin' gf," who I sometimes write about here due to her felicity with mangling metaphors. But, sometimes I use it for other things and people.
I didn't make "evalovin'" up any more than I did "see you in church." I think I got evalovin' from a long dead writer who, for all I know, may have known Shirley Temple personally, as he wrote the short story upon which was based a movie she starred in- Little Miss Marker. Maybe he got it from somewhere else.
The writer, Damon Runyon, was a colorful and talented character. He was actually a sports writer who is often credited with changing the way baseball was covered, by writing more about the athletes than the athletics, and is in both the baseball and boxing Halls of Fame as a writer. But, he also wrote light-hearted and engaging short stories about gangsters and wannabes, the most famous of which, The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown, became the blockbuster musical, Guys and Dolls.
Actually, until an editor dropped his first name in a by-line one day and a typo changed his last name, he was just plain Alfred Damon Runyan, which sounds more like your middle-aged neighbor with a paunch who exposes his rear end when he bends down to get the paper every morning (which my evalovin' gf falsely accuses me of relentlessly - how dare she). But, Damon - his mother's maiden and his middle name - ran with a fast crowd, was a gambler, a drinker (until he gave it up) and smoker whose best friend, Otto Berman, was actually gunned down along with his boss, Dutch Schultz - about as nasty a gangster as there was at the time.
I don't think Runyon wrote any novels, just short stories, which you can get in collections. Not too many people read him anymore, but they should because everything he wrote was original and fun. He had his own literary style called Runyonese, which Wikipedia describes as: "a mixture of formal speech and colorful slang, almost always in present tense, and always devoid of contractions." I expect someone other than the Wiki writer came up with that analysis, but there's no cite. Read the See you in church segment above again to see what I mean, although I do not have his ear for colorful slang. And if you've ever seen "Guys and Dolls," (and I hope so, on account it is the greatest musical ever made) you've heard it too. This is my favorite bit from the story, which was used in the movie and spoken by Marlon Brando as Guy Masterson, fairly similar to the way Runyon originally wrote it:
"On the day when I left home to make my way in the world, my daddy took me to one side. “Son,” my daddy says to me: I am sorry I am not able to bankroll you to a very large start, but not having the necessary lettuce to get you rolling, instead I’m going to stake you to some very valuable advice. One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to show you a brand new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken. Then this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the jack of spades jump out of this brand new deck of cards and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not accept this bet, because as sure as you stand there, you’re going to wind up with an ear full of cider.”
Runyon gave Jim Braddock the moniker "Cinderella Man" and his "Hooray Henry," became a name in Britain given to describe a certain type of bloke - Donald Trump would now fit the description. In any event, Runyon liked to describe women, in particular, as "ever loving." I liked it, adopted it as evalovin', which I'm sure I saw somewhere else. I can find no sign of it on the internet (feel free to try and report if you have a link) - but it may have also been partially derived from a Marvel Comics character, Ben Grimm from The Fantastic 4, aka The Thing, who was a Runyonesque character if there ever was one, although he said "ever lovin', which is not exactly the same. I feel pretty sure, actually positive, that I read the form "evalovin'" somewhere, but can't remember where. I just like it.
And that is that.
Righteo
Along time ago I also started saying and writing "righteo," to people. I know exactly where I got that from. The great cartoon character Felix the Cat used to say it. I remember Felix from my early childhood. I probably saw re-runs because Wikipedia tells me it ended in 1961 when I was two. I don't remember why Felix would say "righteo," but I use it when I want to express emphatic agreement with something either unimportant or which really doesn't call for a response.
"See you later," someone might write. And I'll respond - "Righteo!" Or "Can you handle that for me?" "Righteo!"
Felix had a magic bag of tricks from which he could pull out all kinds of things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaMTIqhSjNc
Unless you are 5 years old, skip to the end of that for when Felix says "Righteo!" I try to use the same intonation when I say it, even though it must seem bizarre to anyone not familiar with Felix.
Occasionally I will say "I know - I'll use my magic bag of tricks," or something like that in Felix's voice too. I wish I had a magic bag of tricks. They definitely came in handy for Felix.
As with "see you in church," I don't know why I like to say "righteo" either. I just do.
And that is that.
No worries
Unlike "See you in church" or "righteo," there is probably a reason I so often write "no worries" to people in response to any suggestion that there might be some small thing to worry about, either because I did someone a favor they are concerned about or they will have to get back to me later after doing whatever it is that they have to do - really just about anything that might incur worry.
The "reason" would seem to be my own dislike of people worrying over small things, particularly if I'm even tangentially involved. So, I worry about people worrying, which is maybe the same thing. I don't have to tell you I didn't invent this expression, but, I do notice when I write it to someone else, they often start writing it back. Something about the expression that makes it pleasant to use.
Back in the day, I used to say "Hakunah matata," which as anyone who ever saw The Lion King knows, basically means "no worries" too. According to Wikipedia, it technically means something like "there are no problems present here." As the song goes, however, "♪It means no worries for the rest of your days.♬" The musical notation is mine, but the words and music are from some brilliant Disney composers - Elton John and Tim Rice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbY_aP-alkw.
I just listened to that a couple of times, just for old times sake. Still good.
And that is that.
See you in church.
See you in church.
The following section is written in Runyonese:
I am speaking with a friend on the phone. We are getting up to saying goodbye, and he says to me, "Now you say your favorite line."
"What is that?" I am asking.
"You know."
"'May I have another piece of pie?'"
"No."
"See you in church?"
"This is it."
I do not figure this particular friend would notice that when I say goodbye to someone, "See you in church," is what comes out of my mouth. I know a lot of people know it, but I do not think he is one of them. He is not that type to notice something like this. I am not remembering that I ever say it to him. But, apparently, I say it a lot.
It is roughly 27 years earlier. I am raising my evalovin' daughter. Sometimes we watch videotapes. She loves Shirley Temple movies. I do not want to spend a lot of time on who Shirley Temple is. If you do not know, you can google it. In short, she is a child actress in the 1930s and 1940s, cute as a button, smart as a whip and brave as a lion, to use up my quota of cliches for the day. She is the star in a lot of films playing a girl in peril, often at the hands of her own family. She is usually portraying an orphan. She is so famous that she is considered for the role of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, although it is probably never as close as she and her mother hope as she is not a progidy for her pipes but for her inflection and overall adorableness. Probably her most famous movie is Heidi (1937) and after that Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938). She retires from movies in 1949, but does a little television in the late '50s and '60s (thank you IMDB), tap dancing her way to heaven in 2014 at age 95, no doubt accompanied by Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, who has come down to earth to guide her upstairs to the pearly gates.
Just as Shirley Temple, the child, cannot get enough of The Wizard of Oz books, my daughter cannot get enough of Shirley Temple, the child actress. My kid has curly blondish hair as a young girl and resembles Shirley a little. But, I do not think this is the attraction. I never see her pretending to be Shirley. She just thinks they are great movies as does her evalovin' father. At least the few I see are. I can not myself believe that I will sit there and watch them over and over with her, but I really enjoy them too.
In Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Shirley plays an orphan with a singing talent. When her Uncle Harry, played by the great William Demarest, most famous for the role of Uncle Charlie on My Three Sons, thinks he cannot make money off of her, as she is faking not being able to sing, he drops her off at Aunt Miranda's house. Miranda is much nicer, but not the showbiz type. Harry is kind of a ne'er do well, and a bit lacking in morals, though not entirely evil. His wife, Melba, is just a bitch. When Harry leaves the house after handing Rebecca over, he turns to everyone and says -- "See you folks in church."
This may not seem like the funniest line in the world to you, but, when Henry says it, he is being sarcastic, because you know you are not about to run into Henry in church on a Sunday morning when he is likely sleeping it off. As he steps out on the porch, he trods on a loose plank, which rises up and hits him square in the face. Hysterical. Cannot see it enough.
Anyway, one day, I am leaving someone, or maybe saying good-bye on the telephone - the melon that contains my brain will not release the exact circumstances, and I say, "See you in church." Or maybe "See you folks in church," like Uncle Henry did. I find it very funny, because you are not about to see me in church either. It occurs to me that I say this to many people over the last 26 or 27 years. I am not a big fan of tag or catch-lines, though writing this, I realize I have a few. I remember thinking that I hate the character in the movie It's a Wonderful Life who goes around saying "hee haw" all the time. I cannot imagine why anyone would enjoy something like that, but I will be damned if I do not do it too.
Well, I try to stop, but it does not work. I say it over and over and over and over. I can not stop. I try several times. But, I say it even to judges, if I am not careful, and other times where being colloquial is a little out of place. I am not saying this is alarming or that it harms me or others in any particular way, but occasionally I am a little concerned that people will find it tedious (other than my evalovin' girlfriend, who finds everything I do tedious and rarely funny).
But, people say it back to me so often and others just laugh. People now say it to me as much as I say it to them. One friend sends emails to me ending with "SYIC." Some kids find it hysterical and cannot wait to say it to me before I say it. I may be wrong, but I think most people like it (except my evalovin' gf, who . . . ).
I am not the evalovin' creator of the phrase. I tell people this, but they are not listening. The writer is likely Don Ettlinger and/or Karl Tunberg, who write the screenplay for Rebecca . . . or Kate Douglas Wiggin, who is the writer of the original novel, may they all rest in piece. I am not planning on losing a Sunday researching this. I just find it funny and adopt it. Now, I'm known by it, at least by some people. Apparently, even by people who I would not think would ever notice.
And that is that.
Piece of cake
I think I was 25 when I first visited Europe. I was a backpacker and stayed in hostels or really cheap hotels. But, when I went to Sweden I found myself suddenly alluring to women, which, trust me, has never happened before outside of my evalovin' noggin. You can release your breath and take the look of disgust off your face as I don't plan on describing any of it. It had to be the dark hair - relative to the Swedes - and an American thing, because I've met other men who've gone there and experienced something similar. I don't know if this is still going on there, but it was a rather well-known effect when I was younger, and in fact, a religious studies professor (you read that right) in college actually advised all the young men in my class to go to Sweden before they married. Imagine a professor saying that today. Poof, he'd be gone. I realize all this background isn't really necessary for the story, but it just felt good to reminisce about it and I guess I wanted to say it out loud because pretty much nobody is looking now and memories are sweet. Anyway . . .
I was walking down the road after a romantic encounter with my backpack and a car suddenly stopped. A young woman, maybe a few years younger than me, made her ex-boyfriend stop the car to pick me up. Yes, it sounds like a movie, only the protagonist in real movie would look more like Cary Grant, but that was exactly what happened. I ended up spending a few days with her and her friends (her former boyfriend was not at all put out), all roughly around my age, and most of whom spoke English to one degree or another, which they had learned mostly from tv. The first night we were sitting around in their living room and they were asking me questions about Americans and I was asking them about topless Swedish women (I did say I was about 25). At some point, in response to something or other, I blurted out, "piece of cake." In other words, "it's easy." Well, let me tell you, Robin Williams or Richard Pryor would have been happy to get this response. They were literally (not the "literally" which means figuratively, but the one that means - they actually did that) falling out of their seats. "Piece of cake," they kept repeating. And they repeated it for the next four days until I left. It's a purely American expression. I've learned a bit about it since then but decided not to bore you with its derivation except to say a wonderfully amusing poet I grew up on - Ogden Nash, figures into it. They even taught me to say it in Swedish, which I never forgot, although I do not know how to spell it - something like "en bate calkye."
I have always said that if "piece of cake" became an expression in Sweden, it was solely due to my having blurted it out over there. Of course, how would I ever know if it happened? Well, skip ahead to just last year, about 33 years later. I had recently started communicating again with a friend in Sweden I had met on my next trip to Europe a year or so later to the former Yugoslavia, but had lost touch with for decades. I wrote her my "piece of cake" story. She wrote back that it had become an expression there but in English - not Swedish. If I could find the card she wrote, I'd quote from it, but, I delayed 2 weeks posting this while I looked and absorbed snarls from my evalovin' gf that if I'd just straighten up I could find things.
Now, shut up, I already know what you are thinking. I can't know for sure that I am actually responsible for people saying "piece of cake" in English in Sweden. But, it does seem strange to me that I always thought it would catch on there and it did. They did not have the expression when I visited and do now. Maybe I'm not responsible. Could be they all got it from a movie or a tv show. I'm going to assume I am the reason because it makes me feel good and who does it hurt? Let me have it. It's not like I'm claiming to have cured cancer.
And that is that.
Evalovin'
I notice I also say evalovin' a lot. Maybe I write it more than I say it. I usually append it to my girlfriend of 8 million years - as in, "my evalovin' gf," who I sometimes write about here due to her felicity with mangling metaphors. But, sometimes I use it for other things and people.
I didn't make "evalovin'" up any more than I did "see you in church." I think I got evalovin' from a long dead writer who, for all I know, may have known Shirley Temple personally, as he wrote the short story upon which was based a movie she starred in- Little Miss Marker. Maybe he got it from somewhere else.
The writer, Damon Runyon, was a colorful and talented character. He was actually a sports writer who is often credited with changing the way baseball was covered, by writing more about the athletes than the athletics, and is in both the baseball and boxing Halls of Fame as a writer. But, he also wrote light-hearted and engaging short stories about gangsters and wannabes, the most famous of which, The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown, became the blockbuster musical, Guys and Dolls.
Actually, until an editor dropped his first name in a by-line one day and a typo changed his last name, he was just plain Alfred Damon Runyan, which sounds more like your middle-aged neighbor with a paunch who exposes his rear end when he bends down to get the paper every morning (which my evalovin' gf falsely accuses me of relentlessly - how dare she). But, Damon - his mother's maiden and his middle name - ran with a fast crowd, was a gambler, a drinker (until he gave it up) and smoker whose best friend, Otto Berman, was actually gunned down along with his boss, Dutch Schultz - about as nasty a gangster as there was at the time.
I don't think Runyon wrote any novels, just short stories, which you can get in collections. Not too many people read him anymore, but they should because everything he wrote was original and fun. He had his own literary style called Runyonese, which Wikipedia describes as: "a mixture of formal speech and colorful slang, almost always in present tense, and always devoid of contractions." I expect someone other than the Wiki writer came up with that analysis, but there's no cite. Read the See you in church segment above again to see what I mean, although I do not have his ear for colorful slang. And if you've ever seen "Guys and Dolls," (and I hope so, on account it is the greatest musical ever made) you've heard it too. This is my favorite bit from the story, which was used in the movie and spoken by Marlon Brando as Guy Masterson, fairly similar to the way Runyon originally wrote it:
"On the day when I left home to make my way in the world, my daddy took me to one side. “Son,” my daddy says to me: I am sorry I am not able to bankroll you to a very large start, but not having the necessary lettuce to get you rolling, instead I’m going to stake you to some very valuable advice. One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to show you a brand new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken. Then this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the jack of spades jump out of this brand new deck of cards and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not accept this bet, because as sure as you stand there, you’re going to wind up with an ear full of cider.”
Runyon gave Jim Braddock the moniker "Cinderella Man" and his "Hooray Henry," became a name in Britain given to describe a certain type of bloke - Donald Trump would now fit the description. In any event, Runyon liked to describe women, in particular, as "ever loving." I liked it, adopted it as evalovin', which I'm sure I saw somewhere else. I can find no sign of it on the internet (feel free to try and report if you have a link) - but it may have also been partially derived from a Marvel Comics character, Ben Grimm from The Fantastic 4, aka The Thing, who was a Runyonesque character if there ever was one, although he said "ever lovin', which is not exactly the same. I feel pretty sure, actually positive, that I read the form "evalovin'" somewhere, but can't remember where. I just like it.
And that is that.
Righteo
Along time ago I also started saying and writing "righteo," to people. I know exactly where I got that from. The great cartoon character Felix the Cat used to say it. I remember Felix from my early childhood. I probably saw re-runs because Wikipedia tells me it ended in 1961 when I was two. I don't remember why Felix would say "righteo," but I use it when I want to express emphatic agreement with something either unimportant or which really doesn't call for a response.
"See you later," someone might write. And I'll respond - "Righteo!" Or "Can you handle that for me?" "Righteo!"
Felix had a magic bag of tricks from which he could pull out all kinds of things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaMTIqhSjNc
Unless you are 5 years old, skip to the end of that for when Felix says "Righteo!" I try to use the same intonation when I say it, even though it must seem bizarre to anyone not familiar with Felix.
Occasionally I will say "I know - I'll use my magic bag of tricks," or something like that in Felix's voice too. I wish I had a magic bag of tricks. They definitely came in handy for Felix.
As with "see you in church," I don't know why I like to say "righteo" either. I just do.
And that is that.
No worries
Unlike "See you in church" or "righteo," there is probably a reason I so often write "no worries" to people in response to any suggestion that there might be some small thing to worry about, either because I did someone a favor they are concerned about or they will have to get back to me later after doing whatever it is that they have to do - really just about anything that might incur worry.
The "reason" would seem to be my own dislike of people worrying over small things, particularly if I'm even tangentially involved. So, I worry about people worrying, which is maybe the same thing. I don't have to tell you I didn't invent this expression, but, I do notice when I write it to someone else, they often start writing it back. Something about the expression that makes it pleasant to use.
Back in the day, I used to say "Hakunah matata," which as anyone who ever saw The Lion King knows, basically means "no worries" too. According to Wikipedia, it technically means something like "there are no problems present here." As the song goes, however, "♪It means no worries for the rest of your days.♬" The musical notation is mine, but the words and music are from some brilliant Disney composers - Elton John and Tim Rice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbY_aP-alkw.
I just listened to that a couple of times, just for old times sake. Still good.
And that is that.
See you in church.
