Twenty-something woman to her group of friends: “So I have to tell you something. Yesterday? I was reading? And I found something out. You know that phrase ‘a grain of salt?’ Like ‘take it with a grain of salt?’ It actually means salt. Like that salt in the thing on the table. Actual salt. I always thought it was grain assault. You know, take it with a grain assault. But it’s not. It’s, like, grain of salt. Take it with salt. What does that mean? I don’t get it. It really means salt. I don’t understand that at all.”
Consider the future of our country, my faithful readers. It explains a great deal about the mentality of the generation directly following mine that they apparently find it perspective-granting to imagine being bombarded by barley. “It’s not a big deal … just take it with a grain assault.”
January 11, 2008 at 12:39 am |
Oh, my… You should have videotaped it and put it on YouTube.
January 11, 2008 at 12:45 am |
This made me LOL.
January 11, 2008 at 12:47 am |
Makes one wonder how that generation missed learning about Googling.
And don’t you find the mallspeak, with every other assertion a question and “like” used at least 10 times a minute, more than a bit tedious?
January 11, 2008 at 2:00 am |
*sigh*
January 11, 2008 at 2:48 am |
Because “grain assault” makes soooo much more sense than “a grain of salt.”
Oy vey.
January 11, 2008 at 4:59 am |
I have a few friends in their 20s and I think they’re brighter than this. I know my daughter is, thank goodness.
January 11, 2008 at 7:26 am |
I would like to thank you for posting this. Ever since my mother handed me wrinkle cream when I turned 25 I have been concerned about my approaching 30th birthday. Now I can be excited that in just a little over two years I will no longer be in my 20s and therefore not share a demographic with…them.
January 11, 2008 at 7:59 am |
funny…but not in a good way:(
January 11, 2008 at 8:00 am |
Funny, yet oh so sad.
January 11, 2008 at 8:01 am |
A lot of people need to go on a low-salt diet.
However, there are people who are allergic to grain, so a grain assault is no laughing matter to them.
Grain Assault intolerance
January 11, 2008 at 8:13 am |
Hilarious!
Though my point, the same thing could have been said by a man as well!!
January 11, 2008 at 9:14 am |
This is the reason I love to read this blog!
Never boring, not the posts nor the comments…
Yes, hilarious!!!:)
January 11, 2008 at 9:23 am |
Little did this mindless twit know that she was being overheard by *the salt man himself*.
January 11, 2008 at 9:53 am |
Oh my God, did I laugh. Come on, be honest. I’ll bet you a thousand of those “grains” (either one)that you really, really wanted to smack her. Don’t try to deny it- you really did. *giggling*
January 11, 2008 at 10:30 am |
Oh brother…this is almost as bad as when my sister was asking me what had happened “to the other 15 chapels”? I said, “What 15 chapels?” She said, “The ones in Rome. There’s the 16th Chapel, what about the other 15?” She still hasn’t lived that one down.
January 11, 2008 at 12:11 pm |
*trying not to bang my head on the desk*
Dear Lord, someday people like her will be running the country!
January 11, 2008 at 12:29 pm |
So did you ‘assault’ her? I am sure you wanted to…
January 11, 2008 at 1:30 pm |
I howled.
Last line, especially.
January 11, 2008 at 8:38 pm |
Priceless… but I would have to say that I’ve seen or heard as bad from people of all ages. I heard a middle-aged colleague once refer to something getting his ‘dandruff’ (instead of dander) up. My favourite is being in high ‘dungeon’ (instead of dudgeon)– seems like a contradiction in terms.
January 12, 2008 at 1:28 am |
The first time I ever said the word “fellatio” in a conversation, I mispronounced it.
Hard to live that down (so to speak).
January 12, 2008 at 2:23 am |
Oh! I remembered the one that I had heard. From a law school classmate. She said, “for all intensive purposes” instead of “for all intents and purposes.”
January 12, 2008 at 4:02 am |
I used to work for a man who was from the Netherlands and he adored America so much that he completely rid himself of his Dutch accent, and then proceeded to adopt all the Americanisms he heard. It was quite hilarious, actually, because he often got them wrong. For instance, he kept saying, “I’m happier than pigeon shit!” and people would look at him and wonder what the hell he was talking about. Finally, one kind soul told him that the correct phrase was “I’m happier than a pig in shit.” He was a stubborn man, though, and liked his phrase better, so that’s the one he kept using, and he didn’t care if anyone understood or not.
January 12, 2008 at 4:13 am |
January 13, 2008 at 12:42 pm |
Take it with a grain assault and two assburns.
January 15, 2008 at 2:16 am |
When I was waiting to be “tendered” back to the ship in Catalina last week, there was a couple behind me that I had noticed on the island in my short 45 minutes there. I won’t say why I had noticed them but when they were behind me in line, I heard the woman’s whiny voice (you know, like Rosie Perez at her whiniest)say “Ooohh baaabee, I feel so damped.”
I tried not to giggle. I really felt like looking at her and saying, “You mean you feel so damp.” I was in a bad mood. Of course I would never say that to her but I sure felt like it.
January 17, 2008 at 4:36 pm |
[...] Barbara, I’d like to introduce you to David. [...]
January 17, 2008 at 7:09 pm |
Hi, David,
If this post is indicative of the rest of your blog, I’ll enjoy myself. I’m going to dig in now.
And talk about generation gaps… my great-niece is 6, she was speaking with her great-grandma.
Kallie: Mom is buying me some bling bling.
Grandma to Grandpa an hour later: Can you imagine? Paula is getting Kallie Ling-Ling. You, know that panda from China.
See, BIG generation gaps up ahead. (Though I barely understand bling bling, so why should an 83 year old, but giving a child a live Panda? And no, she has possession of all of her faculties, I think.)
As for grain assault, did she really think she’d be attacked by ears of corn? Yowl!