Dylan Bolin

I love trivia.  My brain is full of it.  Sure, I can’t remember which of my young cousins is diabetic and I keep accidentally giving him birthday cake, but I can remember:

“Oh, Oh, Oh, ice cold milk and an Oreo Cookie.  They forever go together in this classic combination:  When a dark, delicious cookie meets an icy, cold sensation, like the one and only, creamy, crunchy, chocolaty O-R-E-O.  Keeps your milk from gettin’ lonely.”

And if I happen to forget my wedding anniversary, it’s because I do remember:

“Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.”

So I’d might as well share this affliction, right?  Here are a couple bits of trivia that you can whip out at parties in order to compete with the brooding guy with the guitar in the basement that all the chicks seem to swoon over because he’s SOOO sensitive not that I’m bitter or anything, I mean, that was high school for God’s sake and here I am nearly 40 years old; you’d think that I’d be over that by now, but you’d be surprised at the details that the brain chooses to hang on to like the kitten clinging to the branch in that inspirational poster which seems kind of cruel to me to hang a kitten from a branch solely because you want to make a poster; the kitten is clearly terrified; I wonder if that cat is still alive. 

Where was I?  Oh, yes.

Perhaps you’ve heard that lighting “three on a match” is bad luck.  Why?  This superstition has a very practical origin; it kept soldiers from getting killed.  For instance, if a soldier was lighting cigarettes for himself and his buddies, as he lit the match to light the first, it could be spotted by a sniper, on the second cigarette, the sniper could aim, and by the time the third cigarette was lit, the sniper would have pulled the trigger.  Naturally, being shot at by snipers was considered very bad luck.

Along a similar vein:  Did you ever wonder where the phrase “Shoot the Shit” came from?  Likewise, it’s origins are steeped in war; specifically World War One.  In the trenches of WWI, there were no toilets or even Port-a-Potties.  Instead, there were latrine buckets.  When they weren’t fighting, WWI soldiers would spend their down time chatting and taking pot shots (pun very much intended) at the latrine buckets.  The phrase later became synonymous with leisure time. 

“Caught Red Handed” is a phrase that denotes certain guilt, but where did it come from?  The phrase was originally used to impune cattle rustlers.  You may notice that many if not most barns are painted red.  That’s because the Ferrous Oxide used to create the red was, and probably still is, the cheapest pigment available and therefore used for large, expansive surfaces like outbuildings.  When a man was accused of cattle rustling, often times he still had flecks of red paint on his hands from entering the barn.  If he was “caught red handed,” he was most certainly guilty.  It was like C.S.I. Yuma.

So there you go.  Trust me, this is only a taste.  By the way, if you have a phrase origin question or a phrase origin that you’d like to share, feel free to include it in the comments under this posting.  I’d love to use it to replace something important in my brain.

-Dylan

Tags: Big Mac, caught red handed, Oreo, origin of common phrases, shoot the shit, three on a match, Trivia