Vexations may be petty, but they are vexations still. ~Michel de Montaigne
No big vexations around here for me except that ice that won’t melt away out on the deck. And how hard it is to walk in the crusty snow. And how much I’m ready for some sunshine. And how I need to be coming up with more words for my work in progress. Okay, so maybe I am thinking up a few vexations just to introduce a repeat of this post from eight years ago. So with a few changes, here goes. Hope the rerun isn’t a vexation for you. 
When I was a kid, I was taught that a lady had to watch what she said. If she was irritated or stumped her toe, a girl was limited on available words to express her vexation. Even the innocuous darn was forbidden in my house. Often, if that word slipped out, you were reminded that the word meant repairing holes in socks.
Most young people in this day and time probably have no idea how to go about darning socks. I don’t know much about the process either. I did try to mend a few sock holes back when I first got married. I just ended up with a bump of threads that hurt your toe. I guess I needed one of those glass or wooden darning eggs that the mender inserted in the sock and then with darning needle and thread repaired the hole. If people lacked a real darning egg, they made do with a lightbulb or a ceramic doorknob.
Amazingly enough, you can find how-to videos about darning socks out on the web. Not that I’m going to take up darning. I’m too busy “darning” all the “threads” of my story together. So I just buy new socks and keep the economy rolling. Besides, everybody knows that dryers eat socks anyway and you’d probably end up with only one of a pair you darned. These days you could mix and match them since wildly differently patterned socks in a pair seems to be the new style. Back when I went to school if you wore one brown sock and one blue sock, people noticed and laughed at you. I sort of like the crazy unmatched pairs now that my grandkids sometimes wear.
The picture up top is Mom. She was always a lady but she did have a favorite vexation word. “Fiddlesticks” or sometimes just “fiddle.” My daughter says she finds herself saying fiddle now when she gets vexed and in the process remembers Mom. That got me wondering about the word and in the process of wondering I discovered a lot I didn’t know about fiddlesticks.
See the guys in the photo. They’re playing fiddlesticks. Fiddlesticks are traditional instruments used to add percussion to old-time and Cajun fiddle music, allowing two persons to play the fiddle at the same time. While the fiddler plays with his bow, a second person uses a pair of straws, sticks, or knitting needles to tap out a rhythm on the strings over the upper fingerboard (between the bow and the fiddler’s fingering hand). This is also called “beating the straws” or “playing the straws.” Nobody knows for sure where this technique originated, but some think it probably arose in the eastern United States. The technique has become rarer over time as the music has changed, but numerous examples have been recorded. (Info from Wikipedia)
My mother’s use of the word to express irritation and the odd way of helping a fiddle player’s music sound different aren’t the only ways fiddlesticks is used. A lot of stores and restaurants are named Fiddlesticks. There’s a country club in New York and a town in Florida. And from the images I pulled up on the internet a video game has a creepy character called Fiddlesticks. Who knew Mom’s vexation word had so many variations?
Another word I heard when I was a kid that was used mainly by a neighbor who loved to come sit on the porch with Mom and Dad to talk away the afternoon, was thunderation. Tommy was good at telling stories and sometimes laughing at himself in those stories, but when something went sour it was always “thunderation.” So I went out on the web to check out that word. An outdoor steel roller coaster that opened at Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri in 1993 is named Thunderation. My neighbor’s use of the word pre-dated that by a long time. But here’s a photo of the roller coaster.
But even more interesting is that Thunderation is a scouts’ camp song. Now the Girl Scouts claim the song, but in the beginning it may have been any scout’s or guide’s song. Here is a sample of the lyrics.
“Thunder, thunder, thunderation.
We are the (Scout/guide) Association.
When we work with determination
We create a sensation.”
I’m guessing if this was sung at a Girl Scout camp, there would have been some foot stomping to make the thunderation. Link to Girl Scouts singing Thunderation.
So what about when you were a kid? How were you allowed to express your vexation? Or not?