Every Family Needs its own Catchphrase

My husband and I have a favorite phrase that’s gotten much use over the twenty-plus years we’ve been together.  It’s a great, all-purpose phrase, adaptable to many different situations:

“We just can’t have nice things.”

I don’t recall my parents using this phrase when I was a child, but I imagine it would have come in handy many times when I inadvertently (or intentionally) damaged or destroyed something of theirs.  When my sisters and I knocked over the climbing tower in our backyard, a strictly verboten act, for the purpose of playing “spider web”, my parents should have clucked their tongues, shook their heads and said, “We just can’t have nice things.”  When I spilled a milkshake in the back of my father’s Audi Fox station wagon, causing a sickly, vomit smell on subsequent hot days, he could have rolled his eyes and said, “We just can’t have nice things.”  But they didn’t.

I’m not sure exactly when we discovered this phrase, but I do remember my husband and I using it early in our marriage.  Even before the birth of our children, when our cats clawed a piece of furniture or barfed on a favorite rug, we’d turn to each other and jokingly say, “Well, we just can’t have nice things, can we?”

After the birth of our two sons, the phrase entered heavy rotation.  When my toddler poked a hole through the fabric in a restored antique radio, out came “We just can’t have nice things”.  When the Honda dealership discovered an inordinate amount of spare change shoved into our car’s CD player, thus causing all CD’s to skip after track 7, I stowed the nickels and dimes in my wallet and muttered, ‘I guess we just can’t have nice things”.  Kids being kids, this catchphrase has been uttered more than a few (hundred) times over the years.

To be fair, my children aren’t the only ones to prompt the use of this line.  If my husband accidentally drops a plate or a glass, we’ll trot out “We just can’t have nice things.”  When I backed into a tree delivering meals on wheels, denting an already scratched bumper, rather than chewing me out my husband shook his head sadly and said, “We just can’t have nice things”.

Another great aspect of this line is that it can be customized for each unique situation. “We just can’t have nice things,” emphasizes that you can have crappy or mediocre things, but not nice ones.  “We just can’t have nice things” implies that everyone else can have nice things, but not us.  Personally, I prefer the emphasis on “just”.  “We just can’t have nice things” places the emphasis on the guilty party involved while mixing in a hint of passive aggressiveness towards the cosmic force in the universe that conspires to destroy carpets and car bumpers.

Truth be told, it’s probably best to put the emphasis on that last word, “things”.  Because when you stop and think for a moment, that’s all they really are: things.  These objects, these possessions are just material items that will eventually wear out or fall apart or grow obsolete, whether it be at our hands, our children’s or just due to the passing of time.  My bumper is cracked because I was delivering meals to the elderly, an act I enjoy.  My antique radio may not be worth as much with a hole in the fabric, but that hole is evidence of my toddler’s curiosity in the world around him.  There may be a few less dishes in the cabinet, but at least my husband is willing to help with the housework.  Finding silly putty stuck to the arm of the couch yesterday…ok, sorry, there’s no justification for that.

Life is messy and things get broken.  My house is a home, not a museum.  My car is a vehicle that transports us from one experience to another, not a status symbol. My husband and I joke about not being able to have nice things, but we both know that dishes and furniture and cars aren’t important.  It’s our kids and our lives and each other. 

And knowing that…turns out to be the nicest thing of all.