The art of the metaphor is not dead. It just takes a little more work to figure out what the hell they mean these days.
I just came out of a meeting where the guy running the thing said, “Let’s not turn this into a ‘scope’ meeting. We already have too many horses in the stable.”
Huh? I would have thought “horses in the stable” might imply something good, as in, “we’ve got all this under control.”
I also heard the term “taking the short bus to school” for the first time this week, which is kind of a cruel image once I realized what it meant, but I had to laugh ’cause it was well-timed and well-delivered by this dude named John. Okay, so I’m not all perfect and sensitive.
(Stream of Consciousness ramble ahead.)

Speaking of John, he and his wife Anna (who also works here) are selling their house in Highland Park to move back to Evanston after only a year.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Chicago area, here’s some perspective: we have this area called the “North Shore” where, as you drive north, you head into increasingly expensive areas. Going north from the city, first you hit Evanston, which is a nice, very culturally diverse town (and home of Northwestern University). Then you’re in Wilmette, more WASPy and expensive. Then Kenilworth, which has (or used to have) the highest per-capita income in the state. Further north, you have Winnetka, then Glencoe, then Highland Park, Lake Forest, and Lake Bluff. We’re talking moneyed areas here.
A lot of movies were filmed here in the 1980s, especially by the likes of John Hughes. The apartment building I briefly called home in Winnetka appears in the movie Home Alone; my cousin appears in the movie Ordinary People when it was shot at Lake Forest High School; Risky Business and much of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off were shot in Glencoe, Highland Park, and Kenilworth. (The house where Ferris’ buddy Cameron is supposed to live– where the Porsche flies through the glass (“You killed the car”)– is an actual home in Highland Park.)
(There is a point to this, I promise. I haven’t forgotten about Anna and John. They’re sitting right here.)
(And yes, I realize I am highly parenthetical today. Sorry. Back to the story.)
Yesterday, Anna was telling me how they can’t stand living there any more. I asked why, and she said that the breaking point came last week when she and John were wheeling the kids through a park and said “Hi” to the people they passed, and each person who didn’t ignore them looked at them like they were insane. “What kind of town has people who don’t say ‘Hello?'” Evidently, this is something that they’ve run across a lot.
I told her my breaking-point story of how I was walking into a store in downtown Winnetka and the door had one of those door-check things that closes it automatically (not an opener, like a grocery store). I was walking behind some guy and he saw me behind him, so of course I expected one of those “there-ya-go” shoves on the door as he went inside. Nope. He looked at me and watched as the door closed right in my face. And this wasn’t unusual, either.
(I don’t intend to impugn an entire area based on these events, but I do find it unusual that there seems to be a common thread at work here. I will say that I know some very cool people who live in the area who aren’t caught up in the ‘tude.)
So, we moved to Evanston not long after that, which is what A & J are doing now (returning to Evanston for them, actually).
Now I have this overwhelming taste for a double order of suicide, chips, and a Gut RC from this joint, another one of my favorite restaurants in the world.