When I’m still half asleep, very early some mornings, thoughts and words get in my head.
That happened around four in the morning, a few mornings ago, when the words — ‘Don’t get cute with us!’ — came to me. It’s an old expression I had to look up, the minute I got up that morning. In the Urban Dictionary, it means “clever in a way that shows a lack of respect or honesty.”
“Don’t get cute with us,” parents sometimes warned their children.
And then I started thinking about old movies featuring Prohibition-era mobs, with one mob encroaching on another mob’s territory, and mobsters using those words.
“Don’t get cute with us,” Al would tell Tony. “Get out of the South Side; that’s our territory!”
Then, for some reason, I’m associating that old expression with something having to do with a Texas lawsuit. I need details, and I find them in a Fox News story. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton “filed a lawsuit against the state capital and its county, for not lifting their mask mandates after Governor Greg Abbott rolled back the measure statewide.”
And reading that, I’m thinking… “Don’t get cute with COVID!”
Then something about a US Senator comes to mind. I get details in a USA Today article.
Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson “is facing accusations of racism after saying the supporters of former President Donald Trump who stormed the US Capitol in January didn’t worry him but that he might have been concerned if they had been supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement.”
And once again, that old expression comes to me.
“Don’t get cute with us, Senator Johnson!”
I offered a suggestion, a few days ago in the Daily Post, for a great new cuss word, and here’s how it might sound with an adjective preceding it:
“Don’t be a ‘flaming caucus,’ Senator Johnson!”
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.