Fun With Phrases

Have you ever had someone say to you, "Hello there. Your face is on fire and there are pumpkin farms in your armpits", when what they really meant was, "My boss is really getting on my nerves. I wish he would stop acting like a little girl"? Well welcome to my world. There are certain words and phrases that people use, and I know what they mean, but it really sounds like something else to me.

I'll give you an example of a phrase that movie critics use when they're talking about some heart-warming kind of movie that they liked. They'll call the movie a "triumph of the spirit". Now I understand that we all have a spirit, and that what the critics mean when they say "triumph of the spirit" has to do with a victory that is so deep that it goes all of the way to the most inner-core of one's being. But still, that's not what I hear. When I think of a spirit, I think of a disembodied entity. So when I hear "triumph of the spirit", I don't think of an unsung underdog who leads his underdog baseball team to victory while simultaneously bringing his cancer-ridden mother from death's door back to the land of the living in spite of the fact that everyone said that the guy would never amount to anything. No. Here's what I think of:

It's a dark and stormy night. Thunder striking, wolves howling... the whole nine yards. You had a fight with your spouse and in an enraged huff you got into your car and drove off into the ominous storm. Now you are lost. You are on some God-forsaken road in the middle of nowhere. Twisty, winding, goes to nowhere road. Plus you're almost out of gas. You see a light up ahead - it's an old creepy house. You decide to stop and ask if you can use their phone. You walk up to the door, across the creeking steps... you knock on the door and it creeks open. You walk gingerly into the house saying "Hello? Hello?" but nobody responds. Suddenly, the Ghost of Christmas Future jumps out of the closet and chops off your head with his grim-reaper axe. In your final seconds of life, lying on the floor - your head here and your torso over there, you look up at the Ghost of Christmas Future who is pointing his skeletal finger at you and laughing. He won, you lost. Game over.

Here's a phrase that my parents used to use, and it still doesn't make sense to me why they would say it. They would say, "Don't let me ever catch you doing that again." At least with the "triumph of the spirit" phrase it could be argued that the critics meant what they said and were saying what they meant, but I don't think that my parents meant "Don't let me ever catch you doing that again." I think what they meant was, "Don't do that again." But that's not what they said. What they actually said to me was in essence, "Be sneakier... be more deceitful... learn to lie better." My own parents. No wonder I'm so screwed up.

I often wonder if people even realize what they're saying half of the time. I sat in a Bible study once - the man leading it was my pastor. He was reading some stuff from the New Testament, and then all of the sudden he looks up from his Bible and says, "This is John the Baptist speaking." Now, I realize that I'm supposed to respect my pastor - but I couldn't help myself. I stood and shouted loudly, "You're not John the Baptist!" How could he be? John the Baptist is dead. He got his head chopped off. You would think that the pastor would know that.

I think people need to think about what they say.

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