I have no idea how the little "oopsie-daisy" phrase got started. While I like the sound of it rolling off my tongue, I don't like its connotations. It means something probably got up-ended or someone pulled a blooper.
Like the oopsie I did to myself the other day when I walked into the wrong bathroom at school. I have subbed at that school often enough to know exactly where the upstairs staff ladies' washroom is (and no, I don't mean that our school has a laundry room) but I was in such a hurry to get outside to help tie second-graders' skates at recess that I opted to use the downstairs student girls' restroom instead.
In recent (I think) years, the school basement washrooms have been renovated, so I was in somewhat unfamiliar territory as I approached. I thought I looked at the woman's picture on the sign outside the door before entering, but what I gave it must have been a blurry glance.
Because I soon discovered I was NOT in the right room. My first clue was seeing a bathroom fixture designed for a gender not my own. I made a hasty exit out of there, being very mortified as well as very grateful that I had only met something and not someone.
Just when I thought I'd be able to manage the short hall to the ladies' room and slip gracefully and unobtrusively into the right bathroom without anyone's notice, I met a student - a male third-grader - on his way to a correct bathroom. I knew he could not have missed seeing me come out of the wrong one.
He could've done any one of a number of things, such as never met my eyes in passing while pretending he never witnessed my blooper, smirked broadly behind a hand he'd cupped over his mouth, or outright guffawed at the substitute teacher who was ditzy enough to sail into the wrong restroom.
But he didn't. The bright-faced young chap looked right at me as he came near, broke into a friendly grin, and chirped, "That's okay, these bathrooms got switched around."
It's true that the boys' and girls' restrooms are opposite of where they used to be, but that fact really gave me no excuse to not read the signs properly. I think it's noteworthy that a third-grade boy offered me the excuse anyway.
I'm sure he had a funny story to tell his family that night at the supper table, but I also have a hunch he treated me kindly in the telling. Kudos to his parents for teaching their child to respond to others' oopsies with grace. My guess is they're being intentional about it or modeling it well. Probably both.
Oopsies, also called whoopsies, come in varying degrees of impact. They can have way more serious consequences than mine had, but they can also be merely a spontaneous switch in plans that ends up being just as fun or special as one's first intention or expectation. Or perhaps they are simply an alteration that your smartphone makes to a word that you type in. The result can be surprising, maddening, humorous, or so intriguing that you continue to use the new expression just for the jolly of it.
Such was a whoopsie that my daughter Kayleen encountered a few weeks ago. Having received a pic of the whoopie pies her sister had procured as a snacking option, Kayl replied to Kerra's phone message by saying how yummy the snack looked, and that she'd been wanting to make whoopie pies herself sometime soon, too. Only, her phone (clearly having never been treated to whoopie pies in its lifetime) auto-corrected it to "whoopsie pies". 😀
That's why, when I helped Kayl make actual whoopie pies last week, she referred to them as "whoopsie pies". We had such fun working together to make the whoopsies in her kitchen that day, mixing the chocolatey batter, baking the brown rounds on the cookie sheets, matching up the equal-sized cookies lying cooled on the table, spreading the whoopie goop on half the cookies, topping them with their matching unspread halves, pressing them together into cookie sandwiches, wrapping each chocolate sandwich cookie in Saran wrap, and visiting all the while. The finished "whoopsie pies" weren't whoopsies at all. They were some of the moistest, tastiest whoopie pies I've ever had.
In searching for the origin of the oopsie-daisy phrase, I came across the idea that it began with people exclaiming "Upsa daesy!" when helping a child to leap up from the ground in play. Though our oopsie-daisy phrase has derived from the upsa-daesy exclamation, we've given it a different meaning. We use it as an expression after a trip-up or other mistake, usually exclaimed aloud by the one who did the messing up. We tend to shorten the phrase too, with merely exclaiming, "oops!" or "whoops!" as accompaniment to our latest blooper.
The "daisy" part of the original phrase, though, is a kind of fancy add-on to "day", and maybe comes from picturing the "upsa-daesyed" child being on the ground among daisies. I was fascinated to find that the name daisy comes from the word day..."the flower, which closes at night and exposes its yellow center in sunlight, was thought of as the day's eye."
I guess I wasn't so far off, then, when I added "day-sies" to the title of this post. It seems like one way to describe the sharing of some happenings in my life lately. "Other day-sies" in recent weeks include:
~ babysitting my great-nephew, who is not only great but cute and charming besides
~ travelling to South Haven, Michigan to support our friend Bear by attending the funeral of his 91-year-old mother (and getting to meet Bear's twin brother for the first time)
~ sharing Sunday dinner and rousing conversation with some of Ken's family around our dining room table
~ subbing for Kerra at school two different Fridays, while she attended weddings of former Faith Builders classmates
~ sewing two new dresses for myself which happens only about once a year, hence the remarkability
~ our friend "Debbie" treating us3@home to a Swiss Chalet rotisserie chicken meal
~ hosting an Oasis Ladies gather-n-chat time here one morning when four ladies showed up as well as that many children and a good time was had by all
~ Ken and I doing Wordle together and usually getting it in 3 or 4 tries, but once we got it in only 2 and once we couldn't even get it in 6 (oopsie-daisy!)
How have your day-sies been blooming lately?
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