I don’t know about you, but I use idiotic expressions all the time, and I really don’t know why. For instance, just the other day I said to a friend, “Here today, gone tomorrow.” No, I was not referring to that one slice of delicious chocolate cake in the refrigerator. When you think of it, almost everything you have today — with the exception of that slice of chocolate cake — will be here tomorrow.
The fact is that most things, including the coyote who defecates near my pool, the telemarketers who never stop destroying my peace and quiet, and presidential tweets, most assuredly are here today and will unfortunately not be gone tomorrow.
Another expression which makes no sense, but I still use it, is, “You only go ’round once.” Taken literally, this is absurd. I took basic astronomy in college (barely passed the course), and if I recall correctly, the earth rotates on its axis every day. Don’t take my word for it. Look it up.
Also, the Earth goes around the sun every year. So we seem to be going round and round on a regular basis. Every time I get on a merry-go-round (which, thankfully, is almost never) I go round more than once. I bet you can come up with other situations where you go round more than once. Nevertheless, we keep using the expression.
If we go from the literal to the more spiritual, we still go round and round. I am no expert on religion, but I think my Buddhist friends believe in reincarnation. For those of us who have not led exemplary lives, we may have to go round and round as many times as Lucille Ball has reruns. And we don’t get any residuals.
Baked goods, for reasons unknown to me, are the subject of several nonsensical expressions: “That’s the way the cookie crumbles,” “Easy as pumpkin pie,” “That’s a cake walk,” and “That’s a piece of cake.” Three of these expressions seem to indicate that baking a cake or pie is easy to do. I have witnessed my bride baking cakes and pies, and I can assure you baking is not all that easy, but fortunately, the eating is. To that I can happily attest.
Rain is another subject that invites strange expressions: “It’s raining cats and dogs;” “When it rains it pours.” I have never in 74 years seen anything that remotely resembles the raining of cats and dogs, let alone any other kind of animal. As for living in Malibu, I can say when it rains it almost never pours. That’s why we have so little water around here.
“Happy as a clam,” is another weird expression. I have seen many a clam in my time both on the beach and on my plate, and none of them seemed remotely happy to me.
This brings me to the most stupid expression— “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.” Do not under any circumstance apply this to real life. If you feel threatened by somebody bigger than you are, my suggestion is you run for the hills, and if there are no hills, you run anyway. If you do not, you run the risk of being considerably less happy than a clam.