What's a phrase or saying that you learned from your parents that you don't hear others saying?

When my parents would say something was really far away, instead of saying it was "out in Timbuktu" like everyone else here, they would go "it's out in Gadansk, Poland!" I think it's a really place but like why there specifically? Neither of them had ever been. We are not Polish. Just why lmao.

My mom used to say "been ____-ing looong?" with a silly twang. No idea where she got that from and I've never heard anyone else do it. Like, if you trip she'd say been walkin' looong? If you choke on your soda, she'd say been drinkin' looong?

Some kind of weird hick thing, I'm sure.

I remember a similar one from the 90s. If someone stumbled someone else inevitably would say "walk much?". Or with a traffic mistake "drive much?".
It evolved into just anything that came into someone's head, like if someone had a premonition "Nostradamus much?"
I'm glad it died.
- I remember this.
  Also, me too.

My grandpa when he would get up from a chair/the couch he would always say, "Going to have to call American Hoist and Derrick".

Now, as I'm north of 40 I found myself saying it too which is funny since the company left the market where I live 9 years ago.

First one is from my grandfather, who is really more of a father to me than my own father. Whenever he was expressing delighted astonishment, he would exclaim Caaaaaaaaaaaaaats!

My mother would always say "ass over tea kettle". Don't try to carry all those boxes down the stairs, you're going to fall ass over tea kettle. Or in a funny exaggeratoy way like "he went flying ass over tea kettle".

My father would append the suffixes -aroonie and -areeno. It could just literally apply to any random situation. For example, if he got a good price on apples, he got a deal-areeno. One time his foot slipped and the car blasted through the fence. The ol' smash-aroonie.

Is your dad Ned Flanders?
- This aroonie slang was 50/60s era

It's a matter of propinquity.

My dad referred to all fast food as KenTacoHut. Trucks as Pick-em-up-trucks. I know it’s a thing, but I don’t really hear anyone saying “a month of Sundays” to mean “a long time” since he passed.

Dad: "I'm so T-A-R-D tired, I could F-A-R-T faint."

My grandpa would say "I'm hungry enough to eat the ass out of a skunk..."

Pretty sure it was just for shock value

I too could eat at dennys

Not quite a suitable answer, but I concocted the saying “stop negatizing”. My parents then used the term against me throughout my childhood when I would pout or mope around.

I quite like the saying.

I don't have any good ones but apparently my partner's mom used to "jokingly" tell the kids "you're special with a capital R" (back when that word was in fashion)

never heard other families say "oy vey" growing up. As an adult I learned it's a Jewish saying, and I asked my mom if we are Jewish and she just said no, lol

lol, Hebrew?
- Yiddish actually:
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oy_vey
  The Hebrew equivalent is oy vavoy.

Mum had a few:

"Home, James"

"Lead on, McDuff"

"You're lucky I love you"

"You're big enough and ugly enough to take care of yourself"

My Parents would always say "Home, James dont feed the horses". I have absolutely no idea what it means or could mean.
- Haha, apparently the original saying is "Home, James, and don't spare the horses". My mum told me it's because a lot of carriage drivers were called James, and don't spare the horses means to be quick about it. I don't know if your parents said it differently because it amused them that way or some other reason, but I suppose the idea is there's no time to feed the horses since we're in a hurry.
My mama says the first two a lot.
I say "Lead on McDuff" all the time

“You’re so handsome”

Not my "parents", but my Grandpa. When he wasn't feeling well, he would say, "Feels like I've been shot at and missed, shit at and hit."

I want this embroidered and framed on my living room wall.
- I'm now inspired to make a cross stitch of this accordingly.

Älä välitä, ei se villekään välittänyt, vaikka sen väliaikaiset välihousut jäi väliaikaisen välitystoimiston väliaikaisen välioven väliin.

Rough translation: Don’t worry about it - Ville didn’t worry either when his temporary long johns got caught in the temporary side door of the temporary temp agency.

I love this! What is the language? Danish, Swedish, or am I totally off base?
- Any time you see way too many double letters and a corresponding overabundance of röckdöts, it's Finnish.
  Geographically you're actually close, but linguistically it's very, very far away.
- It's Finnish

"Destructions" instead of "Instructions"

We have this one in my family too! "Read the destructions!"
Yep my dad totally did this one.

“Life sucks and then you die.”

Thanks dad.

This places your dad solidly in Gen X.
- Nah he’s a Boomer.

You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but never pick your friend's nose

I learned that from Grimm adventures of Billy and Mandy
Very true, that

My wife always gives me shit for saying "six of one, half a dozen of the other."

Had to look this up, never heard of it before.
That's pretty common in my area. Tell your wife she needs to get out more!
You can mix it up by saying "six of one, baker's dozen of the other" and see if she catches on.
Very common saying with lots of links (merriam-webster, dictionary, wiktionary, grammarist)
Is your wife from somewhere very isolated or exotic? Or does she simply want you to add more variety to your discourse? Toh-may-toh/Toh-mah-toh
- She's got it in her head this is an old person expression. To be honest I can't remember hearing other people use it much in recent years, but maybe I just don't notice.

My mum always said "If Saint John's bells ring, you'll be stuck like this" whenever we were making faces or picking our noses, so we'd be afraid of doing it (didn't work much). I guess it's a regional thing, since my mum regularly uses words/sayings from her birthplace, but this one i never heard even at her place, and cannot find it on internet.

For us it was "if the wind changes, you'll be stuck like that"
I found this disproportionately funny because I used to live near a St John's that had bells that would ring multiple times per day
I read a french childrens book about this, so it's definitely more withspread.
Edit: could have been Swedish, it was a long time ago (the kid gets stuck as the wind changed and the bell rang, finally unstuck at the end of the book, does another face and gets re-stuck IIRC).
- Oh could be just a variation on a tale then. The wind version definitely exists in english apparently, i can't find it in french.
I know this one too from The Netherlands. But here it was just "when the bell tolls"

At some point my father started calling 'Bus -> Bussi" and "Busse -> Bussies" which translates to "kiss/kissing"
We also have Kuss it german and Bussi is more of another fun word for kiss

Kissing bussies eh
Hmm pretty sure Bus is also kiss in farsi, coincidence?
- Beso is kiss in spanish, and basiatio in Latin. Farsi, German, Latin, and Spanish all fall under the Indo-European language family, so it isn't far-fetched that these words would all have a common root.

My mom's exasperated "shit a fiddle!" when fed up with something / something broke. When I was younger, she didn't really say curse words around me except for this.

I've never heard any one else ever say this. Not in Appalachia, or anywhere. She probably made it up herself. But in the 80s she also dated a Korean War fighter pilot/POW (crashed, survived, & captured, unsure of release details). And he could have had a creative catalog of swears that she borrowed from.

anywho

You must've never been to the Midwest. I hear it all the time here.
I get irrationally annoyed when I hear that one.
And it really is irrational. I say 'Yup' quite often, and there's not much difference when you get down to brass tacks

"What's the bullshit?' = How are you?

"Silliness leads to tears" typically said after energetic goofiness has led to an 'owie'.

Bonus: Grandparents were fond of "Children should be seen and not heard."

"heads on them like mice" I'm still not clear what the hell he meant. Likely something unpleasant.

I'm guessing small brains?
- I assumed something similar, but ended up looking it up. Apparently It means there are lots of them. Teeming.
  Oxford Uni Press says