Pardon these expressions

How often do people use tired expressions about which they have little or no understanding? They seem like the appropriate thing at the time, but on numerous occasions we don’t put much thought into them.

I was almost a senior citizen before I grasped the meaning of “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.” Well why not? Though cake is the last thing I’d order at a restaurant (unless they’re out of pie), I understood the expression to mean you can’t have it and therefore can’t eat it. Why not? Too many calories? Too expensive? One ought to be able to have (own) the cake and then eat it.

Someone finally explained that it means you can own a beautifully decorated cake and admire it, show it off, bronze it, photograph it, but if you eat it, you can’t have it (any more).

Before that, I simply associated it with the idea of tough breaks. For example, when I was young and bikeless, having to rent my oldest sister Dolores’ bike, a neighbor kid tried to steal it, and in doing so caught his heel between the rim and the frame.

He was in agony, and the more I tried to slide his foot out of the place it was wedged, the more he winced.

Trying to show my sympathetic side toward the thief, I said “Well, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.” I thought the utterance was fitting, equivalent to “Well, things are tough all over,” “You have my sympathy,” or “Thou shalt not steal.”

Before I considered going for a saw or a hammer to free the kid, his older brother appeared, accused me of misleading the boy, and freed him by pouring motor oil to the stuck part. The older, oleaginous, accusatory brother didn’t stick around to express gratitude for my platitude.

I’ve gone through life — as have many of you — using expressions that seem to fit but which we still don’t understand.

Another troublesome construction is “You can’t win for losing.” Well obviously, that seems true but such statements ought at least to be a bit profound. To me it means simply that when you lose you can’t win. Ask any Oakland Raider fan.

But if people already understand that a losing season doesn’t produce many victories, what’s the point of creating an expression to validate the thought?

I liken that to “You can’t see the forest for the trees,” which I do understand. And it’s brilliant. Here’s why:

It means people are unable to see the big picture. Why? Because there are too many details obscuring the solution or revelation or answer. So the metaphor is perfect. The forest consists of millions of trees, which get in the way of the entire forest. The expression is a bit paradoxical, but it makes sense (to me).

We’re guilty not only of failing to understand the expressions but of misusing them as well.

Take, for example “Chomping at the bit.” It means eagerly and impatiently waiting to do something. And we surmise it’s the kind of chomping done by a horse as it beats its gums against the bit, eager to gallop into the ramada.

Yet, some sources argue the term should be “champing,” not “chomping.”

And we use the expression “stomping grounds” as if some time in our youth we used to stomp on the terrain. The term gets used at class reunions when alumni return to their favorite haunt.

Is it possible to refer to stomping (or stamping) grounds in the present tense? These grounds invariably need to have been haunts of the past.

Are these chomping, eating, stamping examples relevant, or have I simply become too old to cut the mustard anymore? There’s a song that contains exactly those words. But what, pray tell, does it mean? And when did it take someone with the strength and tools of Paul Bunyan to asseverate a plastic squeeze bottle of French’s with a mighty ax?

I wonder whether mustard is a corruption of “muster,” in the sense of being unable “to pass muster.” Mustering, far from being the process of beslubbering your hot dog with that yellow stuff, deals with a process in which one attempts feats to prove worth, usually physical.

While in the National Guard decades ago, I realized how it’s a short phonetic leap from “Muster Day” to “Mustard Day.” And some of us had fun with that. Muster Day was about an approaching event in which we were to test our fitness by running, jumping, using strength techniques in order to “pass muster.”

Some of the recruits, however, wallowing in naivete, believed us older guardsmen when we warned them that they’d be required to eat large quantities of the Heinz 57 sauce in order to remain in the Guard. As we planted spicy notions into the recruits, none of us believed we’d be believed. But we were. And one of the recruits even failed to show up for mustard day. He must have preferred ketchup.

After continual puzzlement by various expressions, I checked sources like Wikipedia, the online dictionary. But I won’t look up “kick the bucket.” It’s more satisfying to speculate.

In the movie “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World,” the opening scene shows Jimmy Durante’s car careening off a cliff. As a host of would-be rescuers gathers round, Durante reveals the location of a buried treasure. As he expires, he inspires the crowd to search for the loot. His foot then knocks over a pail that rolls down the hill.

Though nobody utters the words, we all know the collective thought is “He kicked the bucket.”

I brought up this expression in the Optic newsroom and got some puzzled looks until I explained that to me the expression had always meant the process of stepping on an inverted bucket, wrapping a noose around the neck and kicking the bucket to complete the process.

Optic staffer Lee Einer posits that Mrs. O’Leary’s cow that kicked the bucket that started the Chicago fire was a more plausible origin of the expression.

And if it doesn’t mean that, what does it mean? Maybe some reader will explain this and other expressions. As for me, it’s better just to speculate.

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Here are two other questions:

Why are all illegal abortions performed in back alleys?

Why hasn’t anybody ever met a woman who is a spring chicken?