“I can’t believe I’m sending my child to school dressed like a ragamuffin!”

“I am so perturbed right now, girls, I’m going to sell you to the gypsies.”

“Do you have any idea how many hours I have to work to pay for this closet full of clothing that you never wear—the jeans and tops and sweaters and dresses that still have the tags on them that you begged and begged and begged me to buy for you?”

“Do not make me pull this car over!!!”

“Were you raised in a barn?”

“I have had it up to HERE!”

“You cannot go out with wet hair—you will catch a death of cold!”

—Ali’s mom, circa anywhere between 1978…and today.

Apparently, as I a wee lass, I was a cold-catching, barn-raised, wet-haired ragamuffin who was maybe, possible getting sold to the gypsies whenever my mom had it up to HERE.

Now, if I’m being honest, I have in the recent past told my son that I was going to send him to military school and I have told my daughters that I’m going to google finishing schools to send them to after watching them eat soup with their fingers, but sold to the gypsies?!?

Of course, as I do with all of my best head-scratchers, I took to Twitter and Facebook to find out if other people’s mothers threatened to sell them to the gypsies as well. Social media, as it’s apt to do, confirmed my suspicions—many, many moms in the ’80s had similar gypsy-related threats. Some were told they were bought from the gypsies, and some were told they’d be sold to them. It seems, like Cabbage Patch Kids sales, gypsy sales were super prevalent back then.

I’m honestly shocked that I haven’t heard it on The Goldbergs yet.

There’s even a poem by Shel Silverstein called The Gypsies Are Coming in Where The Sidewalk Ends.

The gypsies are coming, the old people say,
To buy little children and take them away
Fifty cents for fat ones
Twenty cents for lean ones
Fifteen cents for dirty ones
Thirty cents for clean ones
A nickel each for mean ones…

{Interestingly, the poem got changed from The Gypsies to The Googies at some point. Maybe it was when she told Shel Silverstein that gypsy selling is actually not just a thing that moms say in frustration, but something sort of sad and newsworthy.}

My mom once told me that my outfit made me look like Omar The Tentmaker.

(WHO?)

There’s no rhyme-y poem (or photo evidence thank god) to go with that one but I bet he would have been super useful on the set of Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Or The Ten Commandments. Or, uh, a hipster toga party?

And then!

Just this morning, before the coffee kicked in and before I sent them off to school it just rolled off of my tongue. I didn’t even realize it was happening until all of the words were out on there display, for the whole world to see, and for my kids to throw in their back pockets as material for when they write their blog post in 2034 about all of the ridiculous things their mom used to say.

“Do you have any idea how many hours I have to work to pay for this closet full of clothing that you never wear—the jeans and tops and sweaters and dresses that still have the tags on them that you begged and begged and begged me to buy for you?”

I guess I am my mom

(ism). 

And I’m probably sending at least one to school looking like a ragamuffin, just after I google finishing schools.