Mama Said: ‘Fit as a fiddle’ and ‘Clean as a whistle’

Mama said, “You’re fit as a fiddle.”

Well, thank goodness.

Although I have wondered exactly what kind of physical condition a fiddle is in.

A fiddle has a waist, I’ll give it that. A remarkably small one. But it also spends most of its life lying in a case and only comes out when somebody wants it to perform. That doesn’t sound particularly fit to me.

It doesn’t walk. It doesn’t run. It certainly doesn’t go to the gym. And if someone stretched four strings across me as tightly as those on a fiddle, I doubt “fit” would be the word I’d use to describe my condition.

Still, Mama thought being fit as a fiddle was a very good thing.

Then there was “clean as a whistle.”

This one raises even more questions.

Have you ever looked inside a whistle?

People blow into them.

Coaches blow into them. Referees blow into them. Lifeguards blow into them. Children blow into them and then hand them to another child, who immediately blows into them.

There is absolutely nothing about this process that suggests cleanliness.

Yet Mama could walk into a freshly scrubbed kitchen, look around approvingly and declare it “clean as a whistle.”

Not clean as a freshly washed sheet.

Not clean as a new bar of soap.

Not even clean as the good dishes that only came out when company visited.

A whistle.

Perhaps we were never supposed to examine Mama’s sayings too closely.

“Fit as a fiddle” simply meant you were healthy and doing well. “Clean as a whistle” meant something had been scrubbed until there wasn’t a speck of dirt left.

The words didn’t have to make sense. We understood the message.

That was the beauty of Mama’s language. Her expressions painted pictures, even when the pictures became considerably stranger if you stopped to study them.

And nobody stopped to argue about whether fiddles exercised or whistles were sanitary.

Because Mama had another saying for people who asked too many questions.

But we’ll save that one for another day.

What Mama said: Life lessons you didn’t know you needed—until Mama said them.

Enjoyed this article. Read more What Mama Said… by Susan Espiritu.

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