There are kids starving in China and other nonsensical sayings

Since eternity people have always had these sayings that have passed from one generation to another. Some of them we swear we will never say to our children and then one day, oops, those words are pouring out your lips and you run to a mirror because you are horrified at what you said. Was that your mother or was it really you? Parents are the only ones, but let's face facts many of the sayings we know as adults came to us in the form of a parental punishment, encouragement, or silliness.



Let's examine some of those sayings and just what they really mean to us. "Eat your food, there are kids starving in China." Yes, that is one I swore I would never use on my children and I didn't I really didn't. First of all there are kids starving all over the world. Second, if I eat all the food on my plate how does that help those kids? My thought was, there would be less food for them it I eat it. Third, my initial reaction to this was to tell my mom to put it in a box and send it to them because I didn't want it. This statement did not get me to eat my food only to ponder the complexities of the question.



"No sense crying over spilt milk" Well there is at least one thing that really make this invalid. If I actually spilled milk, my grandmother would yell at me, that was enough to make me cry. So yes, I did cry over spilled milk. Now I know most of you are saying that's not what that means. But it does set a premise for why I think this statement is ridiculuous. If you want to look at what this saying really means, it means there is no sense crying, complaining or being depressed about things in the past that cannot change. Actually, it is not up to other people to tell me not to cry over the past. I can cry over anything I want, and I realized I cannot change the past, but does that mean I can't regret stupid decisions I made or things I didn't do? Yes, I will cry over spilt milk. Why don't you go "cry in your beer?"



That's just water under the bridge" this saying was approached in the Abbott and Costello movie Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer. I love picking things apart and Lou Costello and Bud Abbott really handled this job for me. Water under what bridge? Isn't water suppose to go under a bridge and not over it? Why would something be called water under the bridge when there is no water and no bridge involved? Why can't people just say that is in the past? Yes it is in the past. It works the same as saying "that's just water under the bridge."



"Rubbing salt in the wound" Wow imagine that, I know if I get salt in a paper cut it hurts like hell. When someone is feeling bad and another person says something that isn't the brightest thing to say and makes them feel worse they say "they are rubbing salt in the wound" Now I am no fan of torture but nothing a person says can hurt as bad as the torture of cutting someone and actually rubbing salt in the wound. Yes words hurt, but in comparison to physical injury the pains are completely different, they can both be utterly painful, but salt in a wound is a physical pain not a mental one. So therefore, comparing a mental pain to rubbing salt in a wound is a little out there. Oh don't go thinking I don't know what this means, I do, just "take it with a grain of salt."

So there is my take on just a few of the silly sayings that have come into use. Guess we need to find out where, exactly, they started.