Every generation has its own unique turns of phrase.
My mother had a favorite whose origin long eluded me, until I discovered Google and was surprised by what I learned.
The clearest memory of my mother launching into this phrase was when my cousins, Lynn and Michelle, were over for a pajama party. They slept in the spare bedroom on a double bed. In the morning, the very early morning, I slipped into their room and we found any and every reason to laugh. My house was very small and the bedroom, with paper thin walls, was next to my parents’ room.
In our silliness, I began to trampoline across the bed, causing my cousins to bounce off the mattress. Of course, we found this hysterical. My mother was quick with the warnings to cease and desist.
We took our chances and ignored her until we heard it; the phrase meant to send us off quaking in our boots but, instead, turned us into a quivering, laughing mound of childish uproar.
“Listen to me, by Jiminy Cricket!!”
For a brief breath-holding second we paused, but only to look at each other with wide eyes of disbelief, mouthing “Jiminy Cricket??” to each other. When that second was over we exhaled for our next round. There was no way we couldn’t laugh.
A singing cricket dressed in spats, a top hat and carrying an umbrella, was supposed to be a threat?You can be sure that phrase got a real workout from the three of us—under our breath in the classroom, the lunchroom, girls’ room, slumber parties, whenever we were in the mood for a good laugh. I even used it at a wake once, but nobody knows the trouble I saw for that one.
Jiminy had become a hazy memory until recently, when I was attacked by none other than a real cricket—an escapee from the lizard cage upstairs. Well, maybe attacked is too strong a word, but when you are diligently working away at your computer and a crazed cricket, who must have had some serious training from Mr. Miagi, leaps over the screen at your face, I consider it an attack.
In the midst of the arm flailing, he escaped into my printer, only to try another assault a few minutes later. This time I was ready and deflected him onto my Etz Hayim (Torah and Commentary), and there he sat staring at me with beady little cricket eyes and I thought he doesn’t know how lucky he is to be sitting where he is sitting since I couldn’t squish him on a holy book.
It was then that I started thinking about memories.
The Torah is a book of memories, but not the Jiminy Cricket kind of memories that bring a nostalgic tear to the eye or smile to the lips. They are not vague shadows of the past but vibrant pieces of time, when God entered into the history of the Jewish people; experiences that remain expectant, living, and transforming in the present.
And so it is with the Mass, the celebration of the Paschal Mystery.
Jesus, the devout Jew, embraced such memory when he instructed the disciples to “Do this in memory of me;” Jesus, the devout Jew, present in the Eucharist and transforming God’s people through his life, death, resurrection and ascension.
This is memory that is alive, that gives life because it is life.
See what God has done for us.
As for “Jiminy Cricket,” I discovered that the phrase came before the character and that it is known as an expletive euphemism; a polite way of exclaiming Jesus Christ. My mother could have also used, “Jiminy Christmas!” or “Jiminy Crispus” but somehow the memory wouldn’t have been the same for children who were fans of Saturday morning TV.
Who would have thought back then that a cricket would end up becoming part of a faith journey?
Link to photo http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d167/brynniev/jiminy_140x143.gif
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