Alls I'm sayin' is...

I like the sound of that phrase.
It flows.

Does "alls" take an apostrophe?
If you're shaking your head "yes" then I need to ask you why.
It's not possessive.
It's not a contraction.
But, I agree, it looks funny without one.

Back where I come from
they didn't use the "s" in alls.
and maybe in some highbrow places they say,
"All that I am saying is..." in nice, crisp, enunciated, poofy syllables.

It's an interesting phrase.
One that I take note of when I hear it
because I wonder why the person is saying it.

Why would someone need to say that they're saying something?
Isn't it enough to just say it?

Maybe I'm missing something.
Maybe saying "alls I'm sayin' is" is a good thing.
Maybe I need to hear an example.

Let's pretend The Man and I are lost on some dark, country, Dueling Banjos-type back road because The Man ignored my explicit instructions to turn left at an intersection about ten miles back and now we're forty-five minutes late for a dinner given in our honor at a friend's house and I've just looked up and noticed a strange configuration of pulsating lights in the sky hovering just above our car and suddenly the power has gone out and the car has died...
right there...in the dark...on that lonely stretch of Godforsaken road.

Okay, got the picture?

Now, following are two choices of dialog. You pick one in each case, A or B.
Mentally check off the comment you think is the better of the two:

Me:

A) "Alls I'm sayin' is you should'a turned left and we'd be there by now, Darlin'."

B) "WE ARE SO TOTALLY SCREWED!"

The Man:

A) Alls I'm sayin' is you should'a told me about that left turn BEFORE I got to it and not after we'd driven past it, Honey.

B) ARE YOU NUTS! WHY ON EARTH DID YOU ASK ME TO DRIVE? YOU KNOW I CAN'T SEE OR HEAR! IT'S A MIRACLE THEY RENEWED MY DRIVER'S LICENSE AND YOU LET ME GET BEHIND THE WHEEL???!!! AND NOW YOU'RE BLAMING ME?! HA! THAT'S A GOOD ONE!!!

Me:

A) Alls I'm sayin' is maybe one of these nice martian men with the cute little suction-cup fingers, staring in through the window could tell us how to get where we're goin' and we could just be on our way, Sugar.

B) OH MY GOD! WE'RE BEING ABDUCTED!! WE ARE SO DEAD!

Later, The Man sums it up by saying

"Well, Sheriff, alls I'm sayin is they told me they only had room for one more human."

Separated At Birth?

Squirrely

and

Squirrelier






They ate my nuts
then stole my heart,
but I swear to this day
I can't tell them apart.

Pink Shorts and Black Holes

I was walking out of our local grocery store the other day and
in front of me, leading the parade so to speak, was a woman
wearing a baggy, bright pink pair of shorts and matching shirt,
walking all hunched over her shopping cart.

But what really got my attention was the fact that
there must have been three yards of pink fabric
stuck up the crack of this woman's butt.

I mean, it was all just up there, stuck.
Her shorts looked normal in the front
(I looked as I passed her)
but the back, all of that pinkness,
was all sucked into her substantial crack.

It was disturbing to look at.

I started thinking about astronomy.
You know, black holes.
How, once inside, not even light can escape,
a bit of knowledge that has always bothered me.

So then I was consumed by the temptation to walk up behind her,
grab two handfulls of pink and yank!
I wanted to free that fabric from the black hole.

I didn't do it because at the last minute I noticed her husband,
walking next to her, but slightly behind,
which made me kinda mad because I thought,
"What kind of a man would let his wife go around with the
equivalent of a pink parachute stuck up her butt!"

So, I passed them by, looking at them as I went.
And, then suddenly I was gonked on the head
with the realization that this woman was a sister.
I'm talking about the "great" sisterhood,
the planetary sorority of women kind of sister.

This woman with the apparently numb butt
was my sister on the planet
and there I was looking at her
making this realization
and it all made my head spin.

Then I noticed the beautiful blue sky
the big, tumbly white clouds
and I could sense the spinning of the earth
which gave me the sensation that if I didn't
hold on tightly to my shopping cart
I would just float away.

So. How was YOUR day?!

Birdsong

Their song is the first thing I hear in the morning
and the last sound before I sleep at night.

Each day they hunt, guard and fight,
stopping to call to each other
and take respite in the shaded bird bath.

They are focused and relentless.
Their intensity never diminishes.

Human habitat doesn't frighten them,
so we have a nest in a rose that climbs our house.

The female built the nest that she sits upon.
The male feeds her and guards her.

On the day before the eggs hatched
I saw the two adult robins standing
side-by-side, touching, on the edge of the nest.
They looked down within,
then they looked up at each other
and made soft sounds.

The Virgin Mary and the Four Dwarfs

When I'm dead and sneaking through the Pearly Gates, after I ask St. Peter who really killed Jimmy Hoffa, I'm gonna ask him to pleeease explain the appeal of Yard Ornaments, in particular the cement goose with holiday outfits that you can actually purchase in stores and online. "Outfits for a cement goose, St. Peter! I don't understand!"

When I first moved here to O, I had never before seen a cement goose. The Man's aunt had one sitting on her front porch, dressed in a bonnet and apron, which signified I didn't know what, so I never commented on it until one rainy day we went over there for a visit and there was the goose dressed in bright yellow foul-weather gear...or was it "fowl" weather gear. I mean it was really obvious that someone had actually gone outside, looked at the sky, thought "hmmmm, looks like rain," went into the house to retrieve the goose clothing (from the goose closet, I assume), went back out and dressed the thing appropriately.

So, I asked about it. I said something along the lines of "Uh, your cement goose has costumes?" The answer I got revealed that this particular goose had a wardrobe more extensive than anything my Barbie doll ever dreamed of!

I guess the shock of that realization was what distracted me from grabbing Toto and leaving O altogether. Instead, I began to notice other peculiar ornamentation.

- The Kissing Dutch boy and Dutch girl;
- Teams of Clydesdale horses;
- The silhouette of an Amish man smoking a pipe;
- A deer (think Bambi's father) standing tall with full rack of antlers;
- The gazing ball, a huge Christmas ball sitting on a pedestal - which I have to admit I kinda liked until I realized how pointless they were because I never saw anyone actually gazing at one;
- Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs, which is a very popular choice. But, I mean it, when I see Snow White and only two or five dwarfs standing nearby, I get really bothered wondering where the "missing" dwarfs are. Did they get lost? Are they dead? What happened?

This afternoon as we drove home from the pool I noticed a grouping that indicated someone else shared my concern. There on the lawn, amongst some flowers stood The Virgin Mary and the Four Dwarfs.

I WANT TO LIVE NEXT DOOR TO THOSE PEOPLE!

(And, just so you know, we DO have a yard ornament of a sort. We have a blue rock. It's large and egg shaped and it wasn't always blue. It originally washed up on our neighbors shore along the lake and he gave it to The Man who brought it home. We stood it up in the front yard and prior to Halloween I painted it orange with a pumpkin face. All was well until one morning I woke up to discover a half-empty beer can sitting where our rock used to be. It was an absolute mystery until a police investigation revealed that during a party at our across-the-street neighbor's house, one of the drunken participants took our rock and threw the thing through the windshield of our neighbor's car. After the rock was fingerprinted and questioned, we were able to retrieve it and, happily, all charges were dropped. We took the thing, painted it blue and moved. It now sits in our backyard surrounded by a team of Clydesdales, the Virgin Mary and EIGHT dwarfs (two Dopey's!) - all reflected in a giant gazing ball, where, we hope, it has learned it's lesson and will not be tempted to commit any more crimes of passion.)