Minnie Made Me Out a Liar

“He made me out a liar” is a common saying in the southern states. I'm not sure where it originated, but I have heard it all my life. It is usually accompanied by a self-deprecating smirk and a modicum of embarrassment. It roughly means, “He showed me that something I had said was in fact not the truth I originally thought it to be.” For example, if I said my Uncle Joe couldn't catch a minnow in a teacup with a tea strainer, and Uncle Joe then went on to win the prize for the largest fish in the area bass tournament, then Uncle Joe would have “made me out a liar.”

Well, Minnie made me out a liar.

I had taken care of Minnie for several years, even though she was old when she first came into my practice. She had come to live with her daughter, who was also a long-term patient of mine, so her daughter asked me to assume her care. Minnie had very few health problems for her age. In fact, I found her social history much more interesting than her medical history.

She had grown up in the rural south like so many of my patients. She married young and bore 6 children—all at home without benefit of obstetrician or midwife. Her husband was a minister in a fundamentalist Christian sect and was the pastor at small rural churches all his life. So Minnie spent her adult life as a preacher's wife, and although she lived alone …