David Custis Kimball - blog

I hear this all the time and I’m wondering if it’s a canned answer/response everywhere, or if it’s unique to Maine.

To be clear, this isn’t in the context of exchanging anything of the physical sort. The usage, as I observe it, is as an empty (or vague but extremely loaded) verbal acknowledgment to a previous statement.

(via emilyqualey)

Human Affairs, Physics

I’m looking at this as a kind of ‘inertial thing’.  Someone is acknowledging that your speeding skiff or Boston Whaler has just passed and they can’t deny, ‘there you go’.  And of course, you and all your baggage are in it.  At this point it is benign, perhaps encouraging, even complimentary.  I’m saying ‘at this point’, because if you say something else, many adding a thought or two, and you hear, ‘There you go, Again.’  Well that’s where that pendulum may be aimed at coming back and hitting you in the tender vulnerable places where we all hide our security.

Here’s an old and fond remembrance of surviving a ‘there you go’, and ‘there you go again’. Although it affected me, it was luckily not directed at me.

We, that is about 10 of us were in an 18 foot max Boston Whaler, coming back from a wedding reception on Squirrel Island, about 4:30 or 5 am.  It was still dark, and the boat’ gunnel, not everyone could see, luckily, was about 4 inches above the water.  Well,  wouldn’t you know, a trawler was spotted, perhaps by me because I was in the bow, coming for us, kicking up about a 2-3 foot wake.  Well the skipper was having a little problem with his girlfriend, which he admitted during  this time, thinking that we all soon would be in the water, freezing, but kind of not feeling it.  Well, ‘there you go’, I  think it was the girlfriend who noticed that he was talking saying he only brought her because he thought he was going to get something or something like that.  He made the mistake to cause someone to laugh, when a ‘there you go, again’ moment occurred and she switched off the engine and through the keys into the dark, wet bilge.

Skipper shut up and searched in silence …. except for the low drone of the trawler getting ever so much louder … but luckily quiet , ‘there you go’. Well he found the keys, and she was somewhat satisfied and calm, and so it came upon me, that our only hope was to manuever the wake correctly and so infront of all these Mainers who knew weather and cold and liquor, I quietly began the chant , ‘Quarter to’.  Which to a lubber means take the wave on at a 45 degree angle. I guess the skipper thought well, he could blame it on me, so ‘there you go’.  He didn’t really want to go whoopee, ya right on, because he probably felt he should know this, and maybe he did. Of course, he was sufficiently humbled by the key in the bilge from his now-not-ever-girlfriend, who seemed to be satisfied and perhaps with a kind of delerious ‘there you go’ to me and that seemed to dampen any further psychotic breaks … we were relieved but still scared puppies.  I just repeated ‘Quarter to’ a few times, and seemed to get enough support from those who were consciously able to care… so a few silent ‘there you go’s probably echoed in a mind or two.  

Success, the wave at that angle, completely doused me; I was soaked, but we wiggled to the side, but didn’t pitch down after the crest passed and the trough didn’t swamp us.  The trawler didn’t even see us, or if they did, didn’t slow down a whit. ‘There you go.’  I’m sure they wanted to see what would happen for their further amusement. ‘There you go’.  And so they fished happily ever another day. ‘There you  go’.  

So, Emily, ‘there you go.’