Pete's Teeth

Pete’s Teeth is my new colorful expression of annoyance, surprise, horror, etc. not just du jour but at least du mois. It sounds like this: Pete’s Teeth!!! with the emphasis clearly on the teeth part. I don’t know who Pete is and I care less about his teeth but these are the words that have just automatically been coming out of my mouth the last few weeks, usually when I get stuck in traffic behind some person who finds driving a car a challenge – in my experience these are often elderly gentlemen in hats and young women who are nattering to the person in the seat next to them, but I won’t get it into that.

I’ve always used colorful, off-the-wall expressions of my own making and I think Pete’s Teeth is a mixture of God’s Teeth and For Pete’s Sakes. One day it just popped out of my mouth when I was trying to say all of these at the same time (no doubt cramped up behind some slow person in a parking garage) and it just stuck.

I grew up in South-East London where a favorite expression was Gordon Bennett! (not sure who he is either, or that indeed anyone knows). I morphed this over the years into Gordon Godfathers! for no apparent reason other than it is longer so you can shout an extra syllable if you’re really stressed. Also it contains the word God, which is of course a favorite for most people, who seem to find that invoking God’s name somehow adds flavor and brings a bit more to the story than, for example, yelling Abraham Lincoln! at the top of their voice.

For Pity’s Sakes is also quite a favorite of mine, for some reason I seem to think that having the word Pity in there is going to convince a deity to take pity on me and let all the nonsense stop (and maybe a massive hand will appear from the sky and miraculously remove that car that is veering all over the road very slowly in front of me). I think I managed Pity’s Teeth once, but even I have my limits to the amount of complete nonsense I am prepared to utter.

I really need to resuscitate one of my favorite and long-lasting colorful expressions of a few years ago, which was Pigs in Hell! which morphed I think out of Pissing Hell. Like God, Hell is always good to have in there somewhere, maybe out of a desire to see the offending party rot in Hell or similar. Poor pigs, I’m quite fond of them really, and don’t wish Hell on them, but somehow Pigs in Hell! just popped out and stuck.

Of course, if I’m really, really annoyed, a whole string of expletives just pop out one after another. They make even less sense than Pete’s Teeth all strung together, and probably do my blood pressure no good at all.