What you growlingly exclaim when told that someone did
something uncaring/deceitful because "he knows which
side his bread is
buttered on"; what you mean, of course, is that you would rather risk displeasing the powers-that-be than harm someone else.
Back when I was a frail and tender-minded
nine-year-old, my bi**hy second-grade teacher violently shook me and gave me a long severe verbal working-over merely because I had "mouthed right back" at a "spoiled-
rich-kid" youngster who had been outrageously rude to me over an extremely trivial matter. At da time I was at a total loss to know why
said irritable teacher had been so ferociously defensive of Little Miss Bossy '
n' Obnoxious; it wasn'
t until decades later that I finally learned that said bratty pint-sized colleen was da daughter of a "somebody" in town, and so I realized
dat da teacher had "known which side her bread was buttered on", and therefore when said whiny miscreant went "bawlin' '
n' blubberin'" to da teacher about it, she felt compelled to blame ME for da verbal
dust-up instead of just telling
dat willful child to "shut up and grow up", as she should have. As I tell my friends when relating the story nowadays, though, "I'd
eat my bread without
butter!" before I ever unfairly blamed an innocent person like that. Reminds me of da "Little House On The Prairie" episode about da broken music box.
