Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy

So, one of my colleagues, Vancin, came into my room today to ask me about yet another idiomatic expression I had never heard of (he discovers the most interesting phrases in his translation class). This time Vancin came in and wrote this: "_____ peasy lemon squeezy" on a piece of paper. He turned to me and said, "Please, tell me what is the missing word. The expression means 'easy.'" I just looked at him, perplexed. But somehow, from the back of my brain...I don't know how...but I knew. The word popped out from my subconscious like a soap bubble escaping from a bath.

"Easy," I said. "The word is 'easy,' as in 'Easy peasy lemon squeezy."

He looked at me, scratched his chin, and nodded. I love the way my colleagues take American expressions so seriously, as if contemplating worm holes or some other quantum physics theory.

"But where does it come from?" he finally said.

So we looked it up--heck, I didn't know. We found the answer in urbandictionary.com, a great resource for (often times vulgar) American expressions. Turns out it comes from a 1970's commercial. A little girl was washing greasy dishes with an adult. The adult produces Lemon Squeezy, a dish detergent, and they clean the dishes quickly. At the end of the commercial, the girl smiles and says: "Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy!"

Vancin then went on to say that he had learned it when he had said something was "jammy." He explained that it was slang for "easy," and a student had said the above expression as another example. So we decided to look up "jammy." Besides being a slang for pajamas or to describe someone as being lucky, it can also be slang for "gun," or even better..."penis."

I told Vancin he might want to avoid using that one next time.