We speak the way we think

A lifetime ago I was Senior Copywriter at The Reader's Digest. And yes, we did spend a lot of time discussing the positioning of the apostrophe in Reader's.

One of my colleagues, Donald, was an Art Director in the Creative Department. Donald had an extraordinary way with words. Some of our colleagues would stuff a hankie into their mouths, with eyes streaming with tears of mirth, and rush into another office to write down some of the things he said.

Donald ranked with Spooner, Mrs Malaprop and Sam Goldwyn in his mangling of language.

He developed MS and, to raise some funds for the Multiple Sclerosis Society, and with his permission, we published a small book of Donald's collected sayings, under the title, "My Pear Tree Has Gone Bananas". If you ever got your hands on a copy, you'd have found it was "right up your cup of tea", as Donald himself once said.

When he struggled with powerful emotions, Don would mix his metaphors. Here are a few:

This job is a right swine of a cow
It's always better talking to the horse's mouth
There was a little rat on the door
I'm caught between the devil and the frying pan

Donald liked his food, and was heard to say:

Can I have the Halibut Provencale without the garlic?
I can't even remember what I had for lunch yesterday; it all goes in one ear and out the other
He comes around here and picks up all the crumbs that make up the cream

Asked about his illness, Don said:

It's all to do with the spine ... because the legs are connected to the body, and the ams are connected to the head
My legs felt like solid jelly
I feel like death rolled up
My doctor said I'm not as young as I should be

Feeling the need for emphasis, he would say:

I don't exaggerate, I do six million jobs at once
Five tenths of an inch is an inch in my language

When I coach people in the best ways to get their point across, I still remember Don calling it a disastrous success and asking, How long is a carrot?

He spoke the way he thought. Right up his cup of tea.

PKP