Everybody’s queer, dear, except you and me, dear, and even you, dear, look a bit queer, dear

The expression Everybody’s queer, dear, except you and me, dear, and even you, dear, look a bit queer, dear is introduced as a family saying that Sharon learned from her grandmother. Spoken while Sharon helps Mary Lamb / Amy Hide out of a complicated arrangement of bands and clips, it makes oddness seem universal, but its affectionate humor also sits beside Mary’s pain and dependence on another person’s help.

Occurrence and Wording

Mary Lamb / Amy Hide says she has only a simple pain. Sharon reaches for her waist, helps her step out of her skirt, and finds a complicated network of bands and clips. As she works to loosen it, Sharon reassures her: “Everybody’s something. That’s one thing I’ve learnt from life. Everybody’s something.” She then invokes her grandmother’s saying: “Everybody’s queer dear, except you and me dear, and even you dear look a bit queer dear.”

The proverb’s joke turns on its exception collapsing: the speaker exempts herself and her listener, then immediately includes the listener in the very oddness supposedly excluded. Sharon’s delivery makes that contradiction companionable rather than accusatory. Her broad claim that everybody is something also offers Mary a place among people who are not entirely ordinary, rather than making her difference uniquely shameful.

Care and Its Ambivalence

The saying comes during practical, intimate assistance. Sharon’s hands are less harsh than Mary feared; she holds Mary’s hand aloft as Mary steps out of the skirt, then works at the central band. The lightness of the proverb is therefore grounded in a scene where reassurance has to accompany physical vulnerability. Sharon calls Mary helpless and says she needs looking after, but she also offers concrete help, promising to take her away and get her fixed up.

That promise gives the exchange an unsettled edge. Sharon’s language combines acceptance—everybody is peculiar in some way—with the prospect of fixing Mary. The proverb does not resolve that tension; instead, its humor makes room for kindness without pretending that Mary’s condition or immediate need has disappeared.