Always Ain't Never

Well, it's moments to the witching hour, and I'm sitting here thinking of funny phrases. If you've been my friend for a while, you might have heard this before, but it remains one of my favorite combinations of words, which while perfectly understandable, makes one do a doubletake with the effrontery of the triple negative. I may have even blogged it before, but c'est la vie.

I once overheard a coworker telling the vending machine supplier that, "when I go upstairs to get me a Dr. Pepper, there always ain't never none there." WHOA! And yet I know exactly what she means - we're always out of Dr. Pepper. It's the thinking about it that hurts.

For whatever reason, I shared this with our visiting vendor while waiting for a tool to do something, and he wracked his brain and came up with an overheard comment (from Wales, FWIW), "Whose coat is that jacket hanging up on the floor". WHOA! Coat and Jacket used in the same sentence to reference the same object, and "hanging up" on the floor? And yet we know that someone wants to know who tossed their outer garment on the floor. Almost like when I moved from the midwest to the east coast and got my "pop" from the "soda fridge".

So while you're frantically sewing that last seam in your clown costume, take a moment to think about phrases you shouldn't understand, but do, and share them here. Meanwhile, back to my book.