Now, if you would just....hold....still...for a second.

This is probably not enough material for a post, but let's see where it heads.  I have found that some of my better posts start off pretty much unformed when I first sit down to write.

I realized this past week that there are a couple of phrases I use (and maybe you do, too) that are very odd.  When taken at face value, they are really kinda gross.

The first one: I WOULD LIKE TO PICK YOUR BRAIN ABOUT ________.  Have you ever thought about this saying?  I wonder how visitors to our country would feel about this one, if they have limited English skills.  When taken at face value, this is actually somewhat frightening, no? 

Yesterday, while we were swimming, I asked my nine-year-old son what he thought this phrase might mean.  He had two possibilities:

• 
  
• "Worse than picking your nose"
  
• "Being dumb?"
  

I know that "I would really like to pick your nose about this issue" will never become common parlance.  If it does, I will be out of the loop.

The other phrase that struck me this week was "I WANT TO PUT A BUG IN YOUR EAR ABOUT ________."  Yuck!  Really?  Why?  Couldn't you just bring up an idea with me instead?  Yikes! 

I asked my son about this one, too, and he said simply, "Sounds like someone wants to put a roach in your hearer!"  And yes, he made up the word "hearer" as he pointed to his left ear.

As I mentioned above, I use these phrases pretty often myself, and I never really considered them carefully until this week.  Maybe I heard them both on the same day, and the juxtaposition was more striking.

I would like to suggest that we begin a new trend today.  From now on, I am going to use the following instead:

• 
  
• I would like to put a bug in your brain about (this new marketing idea, this issue, etc.).   
  

AND

• 
  
• I wanted to pick your ear about (something that has been bothering me, your opinion on what I should do). 
  

The first one sounds very much like something from "Total Recall", which was a movie in 1990 with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone.  The second one just sounds unhygenic.

On second thought, I think I might even add in, "Could I pick your nose about this sometime?" for good measure.