Adage

Adage (ad’-age): One of several terms describing short, pithy sayings, or traditional expressions of conventional wisdom.

“You are the wings beneath my weed.” This was my entry in the international Adage Contest. The “best” adage won $10,000 and an all expenses paid trip to the Holy Land, the home of pithy sayings, many of which were published in the Bible in the book of Proverbs.

Their author was recently discovered by researchers at the “We Dig Adages” school of archeology. The school was founded by a wealthy narcissist who was obsessed with finding the rumored saying that could grant eternal life, as he was told by his chief archeologist, when spoken from behind the wheel of a Jaguar speeding toward OK New Jersey—an abandoned town in the middle of the Pine Barrens.

The millionaire benefactor called himself SG, short for “Stable Genius.” He was a narcissist, an like all narcissists believed he was the samarest man alive. Since the trove of sayings had been discovered by his archeologists, SG had driven to Ok in his Jag reciting a saying 100s of times. So far, no eternal life.

His archeologists hadn’t really found any sayings, but to keep their jobs they made up a saying every day and emailed it to SG. The ruse worked perfectly. Every day, SG would get in his Jag, put on “The Ride of the Valkyries” and take off at 80 MPH down the Jersey Turnpike, getting off at Exit 4.

The archeologists weren’t vary creative: “A dog without a bone is like an actor out on loan,” “Life is like the toilet paper stuck to my shoe,” “Gin will make you win,” “ When the goose honks, it’s time to go home,” “If it looks like a pig and oinks like a pig, it could be your mother.”

SG caught on. It was the pig-mother saying that did it. It was an insult, not a wise saying. Moreover, his mother was obese and has a breathing problem that sounded like she was oinking. The parallel was no accident—he was being taken for a fool.

He got on his jet at Teterboro Airport and headed for the Holy Land. He found his six archeologists sitting in a circle in an ancient tomb sharing a hookah loaded with Jerusalem Gold. SG yelled “You’re all unemployed.” His minder blew the sluggards away with the M-16 they had smuggled on SG’s jet.

He looked at the pile of dead bodies and said “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu.

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