Category Archives: adage

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).

The Daily Trope is available in an early edition on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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

Slogans and sayings are pretty much the same. But sayings want to teach you something and slogans want to sell you something. Sometimes they can do both. For example, “A penny saved is a penny earned” can be heard as a lesson in thrift. It can also be used as a slogan by a bank to get you to deposit money in an account in the bank. Given his ethos, Ben Franklin probably intended it to to be used as an adage and a slogan.

I was pushing 65 and I had a waddle swinging under my chin. I looked like I had had a turkey body part gafted under my throat. I tried stuffing it in my shirt and buttoning the top button to conceal it and hold it in. I’d be in the middle of a conversation and it would pop out and swing back and forth. It scared a lot of people, and one or two yelled “That’s disgusting!” and flipped over my desk, and ran out my office door. One person even pulled a gun!

But that’s not all. My grandchildren would go “Gobble, Gobble Grandpa.” The littlest one would pull on my waddle and go “Choo, choo, wa, wa!” like my waddle was the pull-chord on a train whistle. Everybody thought it was cute but me. The worst was when I was cooking on the grill and bent over to check the flame and my waddle swung into the fire. Luckily I had a bucket of basting sauce nearby and stuck my waddle in it to cool it and sooth the pain. My cruel cousin Eddie took a picture and I appeared with a basted waddle on the front page of “Cry Truth,” our local bullshit newspaper. The headline was “Local Mad-Man Bastes Own Waddle.” I was angered and humiliated and vowed to do something about my errant waddle.

A co-worker whose breasts had grown remarkably big in one month, told me about her plastic surgeon Dr. Skinner. His slogan was “A stitch in time saves nine.” I could never figure out what that saying meant, but in the context of plastic surgery, maybe it meant that stitching your time-sags could take nine years off your age. Anyway, I made an appointment for “waddle reduction surgery.” I got up early and was making a smoothie when my waddle missed swinging into the blender by a quarter of an inch. Boy, I couldn’t wait to get the damn thing fixed.

I met Dr. Skinner in the waiting room and he said, “I hear you’re a real swinger.” At first I didn’t get it, but then I realized he was referring to my swinging waddle. I almost hit him.

They laid me out on the operating table and the anesthetic knocked me out. When I awoke I saw two voluptuous bumps pushing up under my gown. I felt my neck and my waddle was still there. Skinner had mixed me up with another patient. He came into my room and asked me how I liked my new boobies. I was enraged. He told me not to worry, the “boobies” were actually coconut shells. He told me that at the last minute he had to scrub the waddle surgery. The coconut shells were supposed to make me laugh. He told me that he had realized at the last minute he had run out of scalpel blades and was unable to slice off my waddle.

We went ahead with the surgery the next day. My waddle was successfully removed. Life is good for me, but not so much for Dr. Skinner. I’m suing him for $1,000,000 for his coconut trick.

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

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.

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

“The best things in life are free.” This was my motto. I’d be standing in a convenience store, gun drawn, balaclava pulled down and a car idling outside, legally parked and poised for my getaway. I’d wave my gun over my head and yell, “The best things in life are free!” Give me all your cash and Marlboro 27s, and Take 5 scratch offs. I’d hit three stores a day. I almost had enough cash to buy a racehorse and a Lincoln Navigator. In two months I bought the horse: a filly named “Pearly’s Promise.” I had violated my motto by actually paying for the horse. But then I realized I paid for her with stolen cash. So, technically, she was free.

I got a trainer and a jockey. The trainer was named “Crackers Punchoski.” The jockey’s name was “Salad Vogel.” I thought their names were pretty weird, but I was told weird names are a good sign. The name shows their dedication to the “sport of kings.” With names like Cracker and Salad, they can’t get a job anywhere else. They’ve taken the leap.

So I rented horse tack from a guy in the parking lot who said it was lucky. A horse running in the Traverse Stake at the SaratogaTtrack in New York had lost by only a nose. I bought a trailer, pulled by the Lincoln Navigator, and a small farm in Kentucky named “Butter Bill Glen.” Then, I bought a set of colors on e-Bay. I registered them under a phony name: Jefferson Starplow.

“Pearly’s Promise” was magical. She was on her way to the Kentucky Derby. That’s when the FBI showed up. They wanted to know who Jefferson Starplow is and how I got all the “stuff” with no records of loans or other sources of capital. I said “Wait a minute” and ran out the door, and jumped in the Navigator and took off. Their piece of crap government issue sedans were no match for the Navigator. I got away, but I knew it was just a matter of time before they caught up with me. I drove to Ruidoso, New Mexico where I took shelter among the racing aficionados who flocked there from Texas to race their quarter horses. I got some cowboy clothes and made plans for a dash across the Mexican border. There was a “hole” in the border maintained by a corrupt troop of Border Patrol officers. I paid the tariff and and walked across the border. I had four big suitcases with wheels. They were packed with $100 bills. I hired a kid to help me drag them into Mexico. There was an armored limo waiting for me. It took me to a clandestine airstrip. I boarded a plane that took me to Costa Rica—no extradition treaty with the US. I’m living in a vila overlooking the ocean. I married a local woman and we have two lovely children—4 & 6. I still believe the best things in life are free. But, I learned my lesson—escaping justice cost a shitload of money, and I’d count that as one of the best things in my life.

Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)

The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.