I found myself with some rare time off recently and I decided that my “Honey do list” could wait and that watching some television was the best use of my time. As

I flipped through the channels, I came across a soap opera that was in Spanish.

Somehow, I knew exactly what was going on even though I didn’t understand a single word they were saying.

I began to think about language and the way we communicate and realized that many of us say some pretty strange things. For example, when you run into an acquaintance at the store, the first thing they will say is to ask how I am. They don’t really care how I’m doing. The last thing they want is for me to go into detail about how my knee hurts every time it rains and to tell them about my latest colonoscopy.

I have always found it amusing that people say things that are kind of obvious.

For example, a kid picks up a cup of juice and the first thing we say is, “Don’t spill it”. If you’ve had kids for very long you already know it’s getting spilled. The only question when and how much. That’s right up there with saying, “Don’t drop it” when carrying something heavy. Well, I was planning on dropping this heavy piano on my foot just for the fun of it but since you have reminded me not too then I won’t.

I had a friend that had lost their phone and was panicking. The next day I asked if they found it. They responded, “Yes I did. It was in the last place I looked”. I thought well yea it would have been stupid to keep looking for it after you had already found it.

I was leaving my job the other day and a co-worker hollered to me to drive safely.

I just smiled and thought to myself, well I wasn’t planning on driving like a mad man down Highway 27 like a NASCAR driver.

I have always found it strange when people look at babies, they will say, “He has his mothers’ nose and his fathers’ ears”. No, I’m pretty sure there are enough noses and ears to go around that everyone can have their own set.

When I was a young man, I can remember people would tell me that I should find a nice girl to date. Well, it wasn’t like I was out looking for the whore of Babylon to date. It was that the nice ones were hard to come by.

When it comes to the things we say on the telephone, things really get weird.

Your friend that works the night shift calls you at three o’clock in the morning and then asks, “Oh were you sleeping”? No, I was up waiting on some idiot to call me.

I remember when I was growing up, my Father was the king of the one liner. No matter how many times he got me on them, I always seemed to fall for them. For example, when I first started driving, I would grab my keys and he would ask where I was going. I would tell him and with a straight face he would say, “Well keep your eyes open when you get on the main road” My curiosity would take over and I would ask why thinking there was some incident that I didn’t know of.

He would answer, “Well you’d look pretty silly going down the road with your eyes closed”.

Yes, Dad, you’re right. I sure would.