SILLY SIMILIES

I write because I read. I read because I love language. Rules of English are not always easy to understand. Don't ask me about grammar although I think I know what syntax is. I'm a pretty good speller, good thing too because I can't figure out how the spell check works on my new computer. The girl who does my nails is from Viet Nam and is a pretty quick study and I always feel like an idiot when she asks me to explain idioms and such that I've been hearing since I was a tot. I get them but can't explain them.

Silly Similes

Do you ever wonder where most of the old similes we use come from and why we still use them when they have become hopelessly out of date? Take “working like a dog” for instance. I guess there are some working dogs somewhere, sled dogs and sheep dogs, but most dogs are house pets and work about as much as a slacker brother-in-law on the dole. Take my dog for instance. He spends the vast majority of his time sleeping. Bathroom and food breaks pretty much account for his day. He thinks his job is being a guard dog but has gotten so lazy that when he hears an unidentifiable noise, such as someone at the door, he just lifts his head and spits out a couple of semi-ferocious woofs and lies back down. It doesn’t make me feel any safer and, frankly, has become annoying so I wish he’d stop making the attempt. I guess it’s easier to use arcane similes rather than find something more appropriate. “Working like a dog” rolls off the tongue much easier than “working like a Japanese schoolboy” would.

Another one that has me baffled is “happy as a clam”. Who decided clams were happy? And how do they know? Now I’ve never seen a clam in its natural habitat. Maybe they do something that indicates joy but when I see them they’ve been chowdered, linguinied or casinoed and the adjective I’d use is yummy. The only thing I can figure is that when you look at a clam shell the bottom arc does look like a smile but I think I’m reaching here. Happiness is, of course, subjective. I don’t want to go all existential on you but shouldn’t we define it before we bandy it about in context to clams? I think “happier than an ugly girl on her wedding day” might be truer but, again, doesn’t roll off the tongue.

Blind as a bat would imply cave floors strewn with the creature’s little bodies after knocking themselves senseless slamming into walls. In fact bats have a sophisticated system of echo location not unlike sonar which enables them to get around quite nicely thank you very much. In fact they function just as well in daylight as night time, an advantage over most animals, including man. Takes the punch out of the simile though doesn’t it.

You can’t prove that loons are crazy. Not the way you can prove that a fruit cake is nutty. And how do we know peacocks are proud? Maybe they just have sore feet--strutting around nature’s catwalk like they do. It’s really not easy to take candy from a baby you know. Sure, it can be done but it’s hard to shut them up afterwards. If you have sensitive ears it’s not worth it. Get your own candy. Just to let you know, when I’m in an awkward situation I do not flop around like a fish out of water, and it doesn’t kill me either. But sometimes I do sleep like a log.

Some similes are downright prejudicial. Why are bees busy while hornets are angry? Why is a goose silly but an owl wise? All dirt is not old. There’s some brand new dirt at the bottom of my compost heap.

Maybe that’s why the new generation doesn’t use similes any more. The word “like” has become the unspoken simile. “I was like....you know” has become common usage. I guess we’re supposed to listen to the rest of the sentence and fill in the blank with something appropriate. In this case dumb as a box of rocks comes to mind.