Tuesday, March 29, 2011

A Conversation.

The other day, I was talking to Holly. We were both incredibly sleep deprived. She turned to me and said the following:
Holly: “You know what I was thinking about just now?”

Jessica: “Our conversation that we’re having?”

Holly: “No.”

Jessica: “Alright, good to know. What were you thinking about during our otherwise meaningful discussion?”

Holly: “I was thinking about how people are silly. You know how people use those colloquialisms like ‘my career is on the rocks’? It’s so weird that we come up with these phrases because rocks clack against each other and they don’t fit together, so we use it as a metaphor. We’re just monkeys banging rocks together.”

Jessica: “…”

Holly: “What?”

Jessica: “I don’t think that’s why people say that.”

Holly: “Sure it is.” She made her hands clack clack together.

Jessica: “I think it came about because of rocks at the bottom of cliffs and you don’t want to pull your boat ashore and hit the rocks. Or if you jump off the cliff, and you aren't suicidal, you obviously don’t want to land on the rocks. You want to land in the ocean. So when things are bad, they’re on the rocks.”

Holly: “I don’t think that’s what it means either.”

Jessica: “Ok.”

4 comments:

  1. i always thought it was about boats running aground on rocks and sharp pointy things 0_0

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  2. lol Best post yet.

    (Jess, I'm w/ you)

    :-D

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  3. Jess, you've got the term correct..

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  4. Excellent post but my OCD dictates I must have answers to all things and since I am a massive nerd I have discovered the origin of "on the rocks" and I present it to you in one of the longest links I've ever seen:
    http://books.google.com/books?id=IgjAJazrBWwC&pg=RA3-PA926&lpg=RA3-PA926&dq=%22on+the+rocks%22+phrase+origin&source=bl&ots=bq8997VaLE&sig=t5VU1DN-Ea05CNF4qnAQF7VCbN0&hl=en&ei=3mGUTeXBH6iQ0QHfw7X1Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAjgU#v=onepage&q=%22on%20the%20rocks%22%20phrase%20origin&f=false

    ReplyDelete