Cliché’s…Just Beat Me with a Stick

If there’s one thing I loathe more than fried liver, it’s the use of blown-out clichés! My family thrived on both. If there weren’t clichés, they would have remained as mute as Neanderthals. God only knows what would have happened if liver were removed from their diet.

Like the over-use of the word ‘got.’ Forget trying to refine your language skills. It’s useless. The better substitute for ‘got’ is the word ‘have.’ Unfortunately it doesn’t fit all situations. So, like it or not, ‘got’ is here to stay. Likewise, so is the prolific use of the vernacular.

But clichés? Why, that’s another matter. Those horrid but stealthy idioms crept unawares into my subconscious. They sublimated me into a culture more consistent with the Middle Paleolithic.

As for clichés, if you rummage through the landfill of linguistic leftovers you’ll find used-up lingo and cast-off verbal offal languishing like skeletons, waiting for the promise of resurrection. It’s an ugly sight.

The streets are full of people with limited language skills who spout such drivel. You know, the yada, yada, yada crowd. ‘Get a grip, people’ (oops, a slip!).

This is not about liver, but the analogies are similar to me. They’re both revolting. Now my mother, bless her heart, tried her best by trickery to force-feed me that vile organ. It might have been her singular failing in life before she ‘kicked the bucket’ (oops, sorry mom).

If you have a teenager, don’t feel stupid if you can’t communicate. They speak in tongues these days. No, they’re not part of the Pentecostal movement; they’re just speaking their own brand of Esperanto. Read Rap lyrics.

I keep getting back to the issue of liver. Sorry. Bear with me. I’m attempting to use your sofa to pour out these awful memories of childhood and relieve myself of the burden of toting them around for another 70 years or so.

My mother disguised liver to look like hamburger steak. She globbed it with ketchup, A-1 and Worcestershire. But the stench gave it away.

Cooked liver has the aroma of an admixture of rotten eggs and Agent Orange, supposedly a harmless crop defoliate that was certified safe by the Future Farmers of America. In those days their mantra was ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ FFA dropped that slogan like a ‘hot potato’ when the military appropriated it by trying to explain the now infamous cliché of ‘it takes one to know one.’

My grandmother was a reservoir of clichés. Her favorite was ‘better than sliced bread,’ a line she swore came directly from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. She was like a jack-in-a-box. Open the lid, out pops the cliché. I searched that ancient manuscript. The only memorable line I found was, ‘that dog won’t hunt.’ I think Omar was advising Genghis Kahn at the time.

We had lots of funerals in my little town. I blame liver and clichés for my distaste for them. At funerals, ‘misery loves company’ (can’t help it). They screwed up their faces, put on the thread-bare Sears suits and uttered such exhausted platitudes as, ‘Sorry for your loss,’ or ‘He’s in a better place.’ They sounded sincere, even if the lines were lifted from some old yellowed Hallmark card.

Like everyone else, I became proficient in the use of clichés. So good, in fact, that I considered a dual career: politics and preaching. Fortunately, my brother helped me ‘read between the lines’ (now, that’s a good one!). He revealed that ‘the love of money was the root of all evil’ (bank this one!). With those career choices I saw instantly I was destined for failure, or jail, or both. So I chose real estate. ‘The jury is still out.’

Satis verborum…enough words about nothing. Somewhere out there I hear a chorus chanting, ‘Get a life!’ Which is probably what you’re hoping I’ll do right now.

Bud Hearn
January 28, 2013