Expressions your mum and dad used to use ...

[Zanelad]

If my sister or I had been pestering dad for something he'd say "Those who ask don't get and those who do ask still don't get"

Mum's favourite was "Wait till your father gets home" if we'd been playing up.

 

[Blue Hills]

as my dear old dad said:

don't waste time on cyclechat.

 

[KnittyNorah]

I do wonder if that’s from those who survived terror of war? A phrase to say they have PTSD.

I think it often was, for those who had lived through WW2 - a tactful way to say 'shell shock' without being quite so WW1 about it - but of course PTSD was not a recognised diagnosis until 1980. PTSD, under a range of other names, though, has been recognised for literally millennia. I think it was first described in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

I had an uncle - married to my mum's sister - who was 'semi-excused' all sorts of vague unpleasantnesses, nastiness and controlling behaviour because he was 'bad with his nerves'. He was a very different character to the rest of my mum's family; none of us cousins ever went to their house by ourselves or were left there, and their two kids always came to us and my other uncles and aunts, and came away on holidays with us too.

Nevertheless this uncle XXX was - to the day he died - excused as 'bad with his nerves', and my dad and the husband of my mum's other sister - who had each had their own wartime traumas - were always 'great friends' with him except that I don't think they were, really, they just felt desperately sorry for him.

It wasn't until the early-1980s, a couple of years before he died, that I learnt from my mother he'd been on The Lancastria when it was bombed and this had affected the rest of his life. He would never ever talk about it anyone and certainly not to any sort of therapist or psychiatrist. I was sworn to secrecy by my mother and apparently even his two sons had not been told at that point; I was in my mid-30s at the time and both cousins are older than me ...
Apparently it won't be until 2040/41 that the Official Secrets Act will permit release of the papers concerning the sinking. A bit late ...

 

[DaveReading]

Only boring people get bored.

Yes, I recall that my English teacher at school used to tell us that educated people are never bored (when we complained that his lessons were boring).

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Throw a spanner in the works

 

[Ming the Merciless]

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger

 

[Cycleops]

Interesting to note that most of these expressions aren't used today. Very much of their time.