Edna-isms, Part Twenty-eight

1.  "Like Sherman's march through Georgia!"  This is a reference to the Civil War.  Mom might use the phrase like this:  "That watermelon went through me like Sherman marched through Georgia!"  Or, "We went through those cookies like Sherman marched through Georgia!"

2.  A couple of similar phrases that Mom used were:  "separates the men from the boys," and "separates the sheep from the goats" (biblical reference to Matthew 25:31-46).  The Free Internet Dictionary says those phrases mean "to separate those who are competent from those who are less competent."  I always thought she used it to mean that sometimes there is a deciding point, where people go one way or the other, with one way being better than the other.  In German, there is the phrase, "Da scheiden sich die Geister." that literally translated means "there the spirits/souls/ghosts separate themselves" which means roughly that is where people distinguish themselves or set themselves apart from others at some decision point ("da" means "there").  I always took the "separating of the men from the boys" and "separating the sheep from the goats" phrases to mean the same thing as the German phrase.