Here's Your Blessing

Somebody asked me today what I meant by being "blessed out." This is one of those nice Southern phrases which means something other than what it seems to mean. After all, to be "blessed" would be, well, a blessing, would it not?

Don't be fooled. This blessing is not what it seems. To be blessed out is the same thing as being cursed out, but without the swear words. In fact, mere swearing pales in comparison to a good blessin'.

My grandmother never swears. (She's also never even smelled a drink of alcohol, she claims, though this does not explain the bottle of "cough medicine" in the pantry, does it?) I can remember a day as a small child when visiting my grandparents. Some men came to shoot some of the dozens of yard chickens roaming the place. I was glad, because I always hated those damn things. My grandmother instructed them to shoot as many banty chickens as they liked, so long as they didn't shoot that big Dominecker rooster. Well then, they shot it right off the bat.

So my grandmother commenced blessing. Papaw got me by the hand and said, "We better just go inside and wait." We did. By the window so we could see. She blessed those men for a good 20 minutes, and they just stood there, .22 rifles hanging limply in the crooks of their arms, their heads hung low, taking their blessing. Occasionally they nodded and muttered something like, "yes ma'am."

While I am fluent in various forms of swearing, from mild "French" to full-on "Sailor," the classic Southern blessin' out is an outstanding example of how to talk really ugly to somebody and sound perfectly angelic at the same time.