Your Face Is Gonna Get Stuck Like That

We've all heard the phrase, whether from our parents when we're children or, later in life, from our husbands because we insist on making that pig face that he somehow fails to find quite as adorable as we do.

I've spent enough hours in front of the mirror making faces at myself until I'm so freaked out I can't stand to look at my own reflection to be able to say with no small degree of confidence that your face will not "get stuck like that". However, after some careful consideration of a few of my habits, I'm starting to think the principle may pretty safely be applied to speech patterns.

Exhibit A: Peace Out

I'm not sure at which point this phrase made the leap in my esteem from comedic throwback only to be used ironically to parting words which I deem acceptable for use when addressing my coworkers, but somewhere along the way, it did. (And I'm not talking about Samantha, either. The other day I *just* caught myself before saying it to Millie, the eighty-four year old woman who works a couple cubes over. I recovered smoothly of course with a, "Peace...be with you." Thank God I was raised Catholic.)

Exhibit B: The Bomb (i.e., "You're the bomb." See also: thebomb.com)

My frequent use of this phrase came about in a similar manner to Exhibit A - sneakily. I swear it started out as a joke, but it keeps coming out of my mouth as if it were still cool and still the 90's. (Way to go, Colorado Springs. You finally got to me.)

Exhibit C: No Laughing Matter

After what I thought were just a few months of innocently mocking the annoying laugh of a friend's ex-girlfriend, I found that what I had actually been doing was unknowingly training my vocal chords to respond with a single, earsplitting HONK! whenever I was presented with something humorous. Needless to say, Gary was not pleased...and neither was anyone else.

So I guess the moral of this story is you are what you eat; you can't make a silk purse out of a pig's ear; and, most importantly, a cat in gloves catches no mice.

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