Favorite Sayings

I've got a few favorite sayings that I use all the time. Some are from movies, some from TV shows, and some are just inside jokes among a few people.

Why do we quote movies and TV shows? Sometimes it's the right saying at the right time, and everyone understands and smiles. Other times it's already worn down to a cliche, and the listener groans at the lack of imagination. (Remember "Where's the beef?") I suppose it's generally a speaker's attempt to make a connection with the listener, which is usually (but not always) succesful.

A story many of you know is that Rachel quoted from "Caddyshack" when we first met, and I was duly impressed. Any quote from "Caddyshack" is OK by me, no matter how many times I've heard it -- I think the same goes for "Seinfeld" and "Austin Powers". Together that's a rich trove of sayings, to cover almost any occasion.

A couple others I use are inside jokes. I try not to grin too much, or expect the listener to get it, but I still use them for my own amusement. As I think about it that doesn't seem cruel to me, just a little odd.

So without further delay...

1. "Well, anyway..."
We had an engineering professor, Dr. Soo, whose English was just OK when he taught us for the first time. (It actually got pretty good, although heavily accented, and he was a pretty good instructor.) He started every lecture with the words "Well, anyway..", as if he had just stopped talking, instead of our last meeting being several days ago. This got picked up by us clever engineers right away, and we said "Well, anyway..." all the time. Somehow it stuck with me, and I still use this saying -- especially with my brother Ed, a fellow Dr. Soo student.

2. "Where will this madness end?"
In the episode of "Laverne and Shirley" when they moved from Milwaukee to California, Lenny and Squiggy came bursting into the apartment (they were great apartment bursters long before Cosmo Kramer). They were lamenting the girls' departure when one of them noticed the suitcases by the door. After these were explained Squiggy cried out "Their luggage is leaving too? Where will this madness end?" I normally leave the luggage reference out, and find this phrase is useful in all sorts of ironic ways.

3. "Haben sie kartoffelzuppe?"
A German friend of mine from years ago, Rudy, had befriended an American G.I. back home in Dusseldorf. This poor soldier had only learned a few phrases of German, and the only thing he could order in a restaurant was potato soup (kartoffelzuppe). If he sat down and asked for it and they didn't have it, he'd get up and go to a different restaurant. Rudy and I thought this was so funny that he and I used to use this as a greeting, with the response always being "Ja, ich habe kartoffelzuppe!" This one's a little harder to work into general conversation.

4. "Oh, the humanity!"
I'm not the only one who uses this quote from the radio broadcast of the Hindenburg disaster. It's saved for a minor pile-up of some kind, when you know everything's OK -- like a collision at a little kids' soccer game that briefly leaves a few players sprawled out.

5. "Whaddaya whaddaya?"
A New York expression with no specific meaning, as far as I know. I picked it up from Tom Wolfe's novel "Bonfire of the Vanities", and my college roommate and I used to use it as a telephone greeting, just for fun.

6. "Sentence enhancers"
In the SpongeBob episode "Sailor Mouth" SpongeBob and Patrick innocently start using profanity, or "sentence enhancers" as they call them. To quote Patrick: "You just sprinkle it on anything you say, and.. Wham-O! You've got yourself a spicy sentence sandwich!" I think "sentence enhancers" is my current favorite euphemism.

There are others, of course, but this is a nice sampling. I suppose a final reason for using these in conversation is that I always have something ready to say, instead of having to think of it on the spot.

So I've got that going for me. Which is nice.

Pat