‘But, mom, I like elephants!’
One of my long-time hobbies has been collecting favorite sayings. I have a big fat file filled with quotes and sayings, many of them clipped from newspapers and magazines, some of them said by famous people. Most of them, though, are wonderful remarks made by friends, relatives and even overheard comments from total strangers.
I’d like to share some of the items from my “Sayings Collection.”
• The first (I love it!) is from a story in the St. Cloud Times from about two years ago. It’s disturbing but at the same time bleakly funny. This total loser was obviously having a very bad Bad Hair Day:
“He is being held at Stearns County Jail for investigation of first-degree burglary, fleeing in a motor vehicle, DWI, refusing to submit to testing, driving after revocation, fleeing police on foot and driving the wrong way on a one-way street.”
• This was said years ago by the precocious 13-year-old daughter of a friend. That bright girl is now a young woman who graduated just last Saturday with honors from St. Cloud State University:
“Hey, mom, why do Republicans use the elephant as a symbol?”
After hearing the explanation, the girl said, with disappointment in her voice as if she were a genetic Democrat, “But, mom, that makes me mad. I like elephants!”
• During his 1965 tour of England, Bob Dylan’s hair was a wild static mess. The skinny singer wore tight striped pants, pointed shoes and polka-dot shirts. A London paper described him this way:
“He looks like an undernourished cockatoo.”
• A friend emailed me this:
“I wrote Tina, but I’m still waiting for a reply. Sometimes it takes awhile. She’s busy. She has three children – two girls and a husband.”
• Singer/songwriter Tom Waits said in his raspy deadpan voice:
“The world is a hellish place, and bad writers are destroying the quality of our suffering.”
• American revolutionary patriot Tom Paine gave us this pearl of wisdom:
“To argue with someone who has renounced reason is like administering medicine to the dead.”
• I don’t know who said this cynical gem; I wish I’d thought of it.
“Some people just need a hug. Around the neck. With a rope.”
• At my age, I so relate to this nugget from Bill Clinton:
“Having lost it, I can tell you: youth matters.”
• From comedian John Oliver:
“One failed attempt at a shoe bomb and we all take off our shoes at the airport. Thirty-one school shootings and no change in our regulation of guns.”
• A friend from Utah emailed me this about her constant upsets while moving to a new city:
“So now all my choices are buried in a storage unit.”
• Famed artist Norman Rockwell was commissioned to paint a portrait of Richard Nixon for a magazine cover in 1960. Rockwell’s son, Peter, later said this:
“My father said the problem with doing Nixon is that if you make him look nice, he doesn’t look like Nixon anymore.”
• It’s no wonder Albert Einstein is considered such a visionary genius. Many years ago, long before the Internet, he said this:
“I fear the day that technology will suppress our human interactions. The world will have a generation of idiots.”
• I don’t know who said this, but it’s funny:
“If Mitt Romney were Santa Claus, he would fire the reindeer and outsource the elves.”
• OK, folks, in the name of political balance, this one’s funny too. Can you guess who said it, finger wagging?
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”
• Actress/naughty boundary-breaker Mae West said this:
“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
• From Cicero, the ancient Roman orator:
“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
• Two favorites, among so many, from Mark Twain:
“Better to be a young June bug than an old bird of paradise.”
“Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.”
• And, finally, one of my all-time faves. It was spoken by 6-year-old Hunter Dubbin of Holdingford, a grandson of neighbors Richard and Marty. When they and Hunter would drive across the bridge on the way to the Dollar Store in Sartell, the Verso paper mill’s condensation tower would be spewing huge white cloud-like plumes into the sky. Hunter would look up and say, “Grandpa, Grandma, look! That machine is making clouds!”
Shortly after that great old mill was shut down following an explosive tragedy four years ago, the Dubbins one day were going again to the Dollar Store.
Hunter, peering up out of the car window, said in a sad, astonished voice:
“Look! The cloud machine! It’s broke!”
Dear readers, do you have any favorite sayings? Please send them my way. I’d like to publish some of them.