The Cliché’s Day in Court
By Andrea Merrell Poor little cliché—old as dirt and worth his weight in gold, yet he gets no respect. We avoid him like the plague. Without him, we can’t keep up with the Joneses, shop ’til we drop, or bring home the bacon. That’s how the cookie crumbles if you put two and two together. No need to fly off the handle. Go the whole nine yards and see if the grass is really greener on the other side. Don’t jump from the frying pan into the fire; just wake up and smell the roses. I know what you’re thinking—I’m barking up the wrong tree with a bee in my bonnet and ants in my pants. You might want me to bite my tongue and stop rocking the boat. No way, José! You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him stop using clichés. The critics say it’s easy as pie—don’t touch a cliché with a ten-foot pole. I say, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Sometimes there’s just no better way to say it, so why reinvent the wheel? Clichés are comfor...
