grrlTravels

Move on over, Emily

Last week my aunt, who is approaching 80, informed me that as a child she was taught that the proper way to ask to be excused from the table was to say, "I have had an elegant sufficiency." I find this expression confounding, considering my English major mind can't decide how "elegant" can properly modify "sufficiency". Not that I disbelieve my lovely aunt, but I just had to google "elegant sufficiency" to see what came up and I found the following:

But the phrase that got us all interested was "I’ve had an elegant sufficiency; any more would be a burden." It means you’re full and don’t want any more food.

It turns out that this isn’t unique to grandmother...It’s from a poem called Spring written by James Thomson in the early 18th century:

An elegant sufficiency, content, Retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books, Ease and alternate labor, useful life, Progressive virtue, and approving Heaven; These are the matchless joys of virtuous love.

"An elegant sufficiency" has morphed into "my sufficiency is suffonsified." Explanation available at World Wide Words

Taken from MEDIATINKER

Table manners do not happen to be a strong suit in our family, although not for lack of formal training. At my all girl college in the great Northeast we had "gracious dining", which translated into the vernacular means "family style dining". It wasn't particularly gracious, seeing as how we were eating dorm food and the main dinner time entertainment was whining about how bad the food was and making a disgusting mess of anything left on your plate. As a freshman I worked in food service, and one of my jobs was "waitressing" at dinner, which was a kind of joke wherein I delivered either the main entree or the vegetarian alternative. What this translated to was being harrassed by everyone, including your closest friends, as you brought out beverages, dinner, and dessert.

I mention this because it appears that E. has decided that etiquette is important in his two-year-old world. To this end, he now ends every toddler sentence with "Mommy", "Daddy", or his current favorite contraction "Mommy-Daddy" and the complimentary "Daddy-Mommy". So a conversation with him goes like this:

Parental Figure: E., are you ok? (We spend an inordinate amount of time asking him if he is ok.)
Eli: Yes, Mommy-Daddy.
PF: Well, is Guy ok?
E: No, Mommy-Daddy. Yes, Mommy-Daddy.
PF: Are you ok?
E: Yes, Mommy-Daddy.
PF: Are you sure you're ok?
E: Yes, Mommy-Daddy.
PF: Good. I love you, E.
E: No, Mommy-Daddy.

Other favorites include:
More please, Mommy-Daddy.
Let's go, Mommy-Daddy.
Come on, Mommy-Daddy.

It gives him an endearing and formal turn of phrase. Occasionally we feel as if we are living with Little Lord Fauntleroy or a visiting foreign dignitary.

Perhaps I'd better start polishing the silver and dusting off the china. In the mean time, I've had an elegant sufficiency of hot dogs, Mc Donalds (Shhh, don't tell anyone), and mac and cheese; any more may leave me leaden or bedridden.

Posted by grrlTravels at December 27, 2004 8:55 PM