Cliché touché

Throughout the hustle and bustle of everyday life, whether it is in business, friendship or romance, we tend to hear a wide variety of clichés and expressions whilst in the midst of the rat race. What's the difference between the two? Six to one and half a dozen to another? I can't put my finger on it exactly, but from what I can tell, a cliché is either a saying that has more of a poetic flavor to it or can make a complete sentence, such as "A stitch in time save nine," and an expression is just a phrase with no particular "Je ne sais quoi" people use from time to time, such as "Git R done."

I've had my ear to the ground regarding these pre-fab verbiage groupings lately them (or at least noticing them more often than usual), and it got me thinking (always a dangerous situation). So I thought I'd put my nose to the grindstone and take a closer look at some of them, just for grins and giggles, because there are more little sayings out there than you can shake a stick at.

The whole shebang started with "The whole kit and caboodle." For whatever reason, this little gem has been popping up around the bend everywhere I turn. The obvious questions here is, "What's a caboodle, and can I buy the kit separately from the caboodle, or is it always a package deal?" A quick search for caboodle on Wikipedia reveals that, "No page with that title exists." So there is no caboodle. When they sell you the whole kit and caboodle, you're getting taken to the cleaners. You've been flim-flamed.

Speaking of clichés that start with "The whole," I've always wondered about "The whole nine yards." It takes ten yards to make a first down. Was it fourth and long with our backs to the wall on the frozen tundra, and on any given Sunday we needed the whole nine yards for a first down to keep the chains moving? As it turns out, the phrase probably refers to the trucking industry of yore, where loads were measured in yards, and a fully loaded truck contained nine yards of coal or concrete or whatever else filled the truck bed up to the gills. So when you wanted the Full Monty, you asked for the whole nine yards.

As I thought about clichés, one word kept popping into my mind: monkey. The monkey is king of the jungle (or is that the lion?), so let's take a look-see here.

Monkeying around. This is pretty straight forward. If you are engaged in tomfoolery, horseplay or hijinks - or just swinging from bars and throwing your poop at passers by – then you are monkeying around.

Monkey business. The red-headed step child of monkeying around, monkey business is a bit more serious – basically monkeying around in a three piece suit. (Side note – Microsoft Word does not recognize monkeying as a legitimate word, but instead suggests "monk eying" - as in, the ever popular practice of eyeing monks. Just thought that was kind of funny.)

More fun than a barrel full of monkeys. Golly, that does sound fun doesn't it? I bet it's no fun for the monkeys. I would, however, like to tear the lid off of the barrel full of monkeys at one of those nauseating My Sweet 16 parties on MTV. Daddy's little princess would have a conniption with all those rhesus pieces running amok. That would be fun.

Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. Hmmm. By my calculations, that's about 15 degrees colder than a witch's tit in a brass bra.

800-pound gorilla in the room. Close cousin of the monkey, the 800-pound gorilla is regularly ignored, which is curious, because if you were in a room with an 800-pound gorilla, I'd imagine it would try to rip your head off en route to tearing you a new one. You could hardly turn a blind eye to it, and I'd have half a mind to run like hell in that situation.

Actually, now that we're onto the animals, I think the dog may trump the monkey in terms of sheer numbers. It's a dog eat dog world, and because you can't teach an old dog new tricks, youth is served. After a hard day's work, my dogs are barking, and it's time to let sleeping dogs lie, lest you get caught up in another dog day afternoon. During the dog days of summer, one can get dead dog tired working like a dog, so sometimes it's nice to curl up like a dog. But then again, if you can't run with the big dogs, stay on the porch, otherwise you could find yourself in the doghouse chasing your tail. In case you get drunk, you can always get a little of the hair of the dog that bit you, so you can let loose the dogs of war again. And if that dog won't hunt because it's raining cats and dogs, just go back inside and watch the dog and pony show on TV, if you want to see a good example of the tail wagging the dog.

Some clichés make me want to throw punches, mainly because I enjoy watching people who are punch drunk. If anybody agrees with something I've said by replying, "And how!" I'm going to kick them in the family jewels, or perhaps where the sun don't shine. Close kin to "And how" are "You got that right" or "You sure said something there." I sure said something there? Nothing gets by you, does it? I guess you wanted a slam dunk by just mindlessly agreeing with me – so glad we see eye to eye. That's too easy, like shooting fish in a barrel; child's play, if you will.

At work, I hear them all the time. Thank the good Lord that I'm not in the corporate world anymore, because I've had enough of thinking outside the box in order to noodle through the problem on the project that I've been spearheading, thus resulting in a paradigm shift which allows me to interface with the customer. But even the regular old chit chat by the water cooler was enough to make me want to hide my head in the sand.

"Hot enough for ya? Cold enough for ya?" Shut your pie hole with that inane claptrap. "Hey Evan, can you give me a hand with this? Many hands make light work. Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today. Let's nip this in the bud. It will be good for you. The devil makes use of idle hands, you know."

Golfers? They're the worst. Every golfer has a fully loaded shotgun worth of sayings that he thinks no one has ever heard before. Make birdie? "Even a blind hog finds a dead rat every once in a while." Hit a nice shot? "That dog will hunt." (Those dog clichés really are everywhere). Miss a short putt on the short side? "You gotta hit it, Sally. Did your skirt fly up and distract you? Does your husband play too? Throw your purse at it next time."

Well, it's time to wrap things up, make like a tree and leave. It's all in a day's work. Ta ta for now. See you on the flip side.

Evan Redmon is a manager of a public golf course in Washington, D.C. and writes a few things about stuff sometimes. Contact him at evanredmon@yahoo.com if you really want.