Pot here refers to what you might know as pottie, chamber pot, chimmy, jordan, john, poe. I grew up with a plain white enamel chimmy with the pretty red flowers on the side. The older folks used a larger variety or sometimes a pail. These were essential amenities, especially at night, as the latrine was a good several feet to the back of the house. Modern life has pretty much done away with all that but in rural areas you will still find a plastic pot underneath many a bed.The old time saying piss in the pot or get up is a lil old lady's way of saying you should make up your mind, be decisive, take action, do not vacillate.
9 comments:
my aunty says "shit or get off the pot" all the time...
i had one when i was little - a plain, white porcelain one... we had a bathroom and all that, but i was a bed wetter and possibly too lazy to walk all that distance... so my mother put in my room and made me use it...
are you doing a series on caribbean idioms???
I think I want to focus on folk wisdom on Fridays. Hmm Folk Wisdom Fridays. Folky Fridays.
We can get to see what variations of some of these sayings there are across the Caibbean.
Folky Fridays! I love it... dammit... wish I'd thought of it first... :-)
I'll look forward to that for sure...
I grew up with a plain enamel one too. My grandmother insisted one was kept. You could add posey to the names you mentioned. I wish I could tell you the origin :)
I grew up in the Southern USA and yes I can still remember an enamel pot for a little while. I also remember the out houses but can't quite seem to remember when we got inside plumbing. Just look at technology now. My God I'm old!
'Posey' here in Grenada too, when T inherited his Grandfather's house, there was no bathroom, but a pit in the yard. We filled it in when his brother took to using it after Ivan, in full view of everyone as the galvanise had blown away, not a good combination with coffee. We still have a 'po', actually an old Breeze bucket, for the 3a.m pee, as the inside toilet is down the outside stairs. Looking forward to more Folk Wisdom Fridays
sometimes we shorten posey to the much simpler "po"...
zooms - oh my god... you pee in a breeze bucket to avoid going outside to reenter the house to pee downstairs??? this so trumps my peeing in the sink on john adams' hall...
I always wondered where they got "po" from, now I know it's short for posey. But now I'm wondering where they got "posey" from.
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