Adage (ad’-age): One of several terms describing short, pithy sayings, or traditional expressions of conventional wisdom.
Life is replete with wise sayings. Like “Put some mustard on your bun.” I said this to my sister. She called me an asshole and hit me in the face. I didn’t know what the saying meant. I had heard the counter person at Cliff’s say it. The customer was buying a lotto ticket, so I guessed it meant “good luck.” But like I said, I didn’t actually know what it meant. Neither did my sister. She guessed it was an insult because I had said it.
This is the risk of adages. They have gravity. They sound wise. They’re short and easy to remember. It is tempting to use them in the hope you’ll make an impression—that the people you use them on are charitable and may even make an effort to appear to be favorably impressed by your saying.
I said to a guy reading the newspaper on the train: “The pen is mightier than an electric carving knife.” I thought replacing “the sword” with “the electric carving knife” would be a stroke of impressive creativity. Thanksgiving was only 2 days away and I thought he’d get the allusion. He got it, but he didn’t like it. I was standing in front of him and kicked me in the ankle and said “Go back to the nut house.” That hurt. I had just been released a month before after a year of therapy and handfuls of little brown and white pills that kept me docile, but not in a trance.
I said “If you can’t stand the heat, get central air conditioning.” He said, “If you’re trying to be funny, you’re failing. Get the fu*k away from me.” “Or what?” I said sarcastically. He dragged me to the door and threw me through the widow. We were going slow, coming into the station, so it didn’t kill me. One thing I learned: I could be very irritating and push people over the edge. And, the more I thought about it, the guy looked familiar from my stint at “Wandering Path Psychiatric Home.”
So now, I vowed to be more selective in targeting my wisdom and edifying my subjects. First up: an elderly lady walking her tiny dog. I walked up alongside her and said “Good things come in small packages.” She turned and smiled and then pulled out a yardstick and started beating me in the face yelling “Help! Mugger.” The Cop on the beat came running, handcuffed me, and took me to jail. As he was frog-marching me to the station I said , “Our lives shrink and expand in accord with our elastic waistbands.” I thought he would like it—he was obese and I thought he would think it was funny. He dragged me into an alley and beat me all over with his night stick. Needless to say, I was bruised and disappointed.
I got out on bail the next day. I struggled to find an adage that summed up what had happened to me. I wracked my brain, I Googled, l looked in my collected adage books—including “Proverbs” in the Bible. I looked for seven days and seven nights. I was about to give up and take enough meds to become a vegetable. Then, boom, there it was on my bucket of fried chicken: “Finger lickin’n good.” It brought everything around to normal. I started licking my fingers. Their damp tips vibrated with justice, peace, and happiness, leaving well-formed parallel lines on my t-shirt when I wiped them off and left traces of the excess grease.
The next day I was on my way to work at the scented candle factory (“Smell This”) when I saw a woman on the subway who looked kind of down. Hoping to cheer her up I said to her “Finger lickin’ good.” She pulled a fly swatter out of her purse and started swatting me all over and calling me “pervert.” I was heartbroken and got off the subway at the next stop: Times Square.
Times Square was replete with heartbroken people. I had a half-hour until I had to be to work, so I decided to spread some joy. My first target was a woman sitting on a blanket with two children. I looked her in the eye and said “Finger lickin’ good.” She said “You’ll have to find somebody to watch my kids while you and me go behind the dumpster over there.” I had no idea what she was talking about, but she seemed to have cheered up a little bit. Next, I went over to a guy on crutches with one leg. I said “Finger lickin’ good.” He knocked out one of my front teeth with one of his crutches and yelled “If I had a gun I’d shoot your ass!”
Well, it was time to go to work. Times Square was sort of a write off. Things could only get better. It made me think of the time-worn adage: “If at first you don’t succeed, fail, fail again.”
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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