“OH! Do get on with it!”

Years later  my mother,  Justine, after having lost most of her mind and any memory of why, found in repetition, the above quote quite satisfying in expressing  her wrath with growing dementia and her impatience for her life to be over.

But of course, the first time she and we heard the expression and its ‘Englishness’ was when you , John Angus, under much more pleasurable circumstances said with weary exasperation:

“Oh! Do get on with it!”  was what you said.

     We were sitting in that old Plymouth parked in that New Jersey drive-in movie lot staring through the windshield and waiting for the second feature to begin.

     But more than the delay of the intermission, your real displeasure was at the animated film of a cartoon Pinocchio projected on the large outdoor screen.  This little creature was doling out the torture — noting the countdown to showtime by moving the hand of a large clock.  But during those sixty second intervals he would be stuffing his cheeks with and gulping down hamburgs,  milkshakes, hot dogs, sodas, chips, donuts and coffee in a compulsive manifestation of entitlement and gluttony in what was mid 1950’s America:  “Plenty of time, … Plenty of tasty eats and treats now available at the snack bar right under under the projection booth.”

     “Oh, Do get on with it!”    Yes indeed!

     Your words cracked up everyone in the car at the moment and became our all purpose response in future years to any absurdly frustrating situation.  I found it poignant but not surprising that my mother made it her mantra at the end of her life as a way to dismiss her condition.  Eventually she was reduced to the single word, “Nuisance,”  … Until even that word was unavailable to her.

Just a bit of America in the 1950s