Knee-High to a Grasshopper

Lisa, over at amerideutsch/Raison D'etre (the woman who I talked about her nose piercing for those of you not keeping up), passed along the post about Girls vs. Women from a couple weeks ago. She mentioned that I was a youngin' (and that I am, by the way, although not nearly as young as this kid....Reilly's Best Friend....a twelve year old that was spotted by Crap-O-Rama while she was doing the review list for NaBloPoMo....some of it is actually kind of interesting to read through like his post about how Mother Nature ruined his chance to skip school to go hunting....it's a nice trip down memory lane of the little things from our childhood that we've likely already forgotten.)

Okay, anywho, enough of the links, geesh! The point is, when she called me a youngin', I had a sudden flashback of when people you haven't seen in a long time say (put on your best old hick accent for this one) "Well I haven't seen you since you was knee-high to a grasshopper!" Most people tend to say "since you were a baby" or "in a long time," etc, but there's something about the old country generation that likes to refer to you as a comparison to a bug. And not even a cute bug. Not a ladybug (which although I don't find cute anyway, they seem to have an effect on Halloween costume). But a grasshopper. Now I know that people are always cooing about babies/kids being "cute as bugs," but when I hear the idiom about grasshoppers, I picture this old, brownish, spiny, tobacco spittin' monster that was apparently twice my size the last time I was seen. (And for the record, I imagine him standing up....more like on hind legs like a human would....as opposed to how the picture is at the top).
You see, I played with my fair share of bugs when I was a kid. Quite a bit of that time was spent in Kentucky where I was surrounded by tobacco fields and these grasshoppers that spit nasty brown tar stuff all over the place (and no, it's not really tobacco...it's partially digested food...and I don't know why they love to spit it, but it's not pleasant). They weren't those cute little bright green ones....or even the lazy dull green ones. They were big....and ugly....and yes, I still enjoyed playing with them....but it doesn't make for the greatest comparison. "Oh! I remember you. The last time I saw you, you were standing next to this huge nasty creature and you only came up to his knees. No wonder I haven't seen you since!"

This is where my imagination gets me in trouble. Why on earth do I have to have mental images accompany absolutely everything I see?

And speaking of images, I was going to end there and just add a couple pictures like I always do. I thought it'd be cute if I could find a shot of the idiom....a kid standing next to a cartoon grasshopper or something. What's the first thing I come across, though, before I even click the 'image' tab so that I can just look at photos?

Knee-High to a Grasshopper
Why I went ahead and clicked the link, I'm not sure. Curiosity seems to be another one of those traits that takes me down weird paths. It's just a kids' clothing store. Nothing too out of the ordinary about that....until you read the invitation that states:

Come on in and have a peek at our "kid-bits"

I think I grew up in the wrong generation because the first thing that came to mind was how inappropriate that is. It's just asking for trouble and child porn comments. For those that spent the majority of their lives without constant reference to Michael Jackson and priest molestation, it's another story. But for me, it makes me subconsciously scream "That's sooo wrong!"

To make matters worse, I was afraid to click further into the site. Yep, that's right. My curiosity will take me all over the net and I've viewed things that I'll never be able to erase from my memory....but I was too hesitant to click that one. It's still opened on that page, but I don't want my suspicions confirmed that it's actually a child porn site in disguise. I think I'll just leave the kid-bits for someone else and hope that no one was harmed in the making of that website.