All the Things!

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Andrea and I’m calling from the DFW area in Texas.

Welcome to the show, Andrea. How can we help you today?

So I had just had this thought of, I kept hearing the phrase, all the things, mostly from my friend group and peers at work.

I’m in my early 40s, and I would be talking to another mom maybe, and I’d say, hey, how’s it going if I haven’t seen him in a while?

And they’d say, oh, you know, running kids to baseball, going to dance class, oh, you know, all the things.

Or I would be talking to someone at work, and we’d be discussing maybe a patient.

And we say the labs are this, the symptoms are this, you know, all the things, something like that.

So it wasn’t just me.

And I did start saying it as well.

And I just kind of had wondered, why am I hearing it all of a sudden?

I just feel like I hadn’t heard it previously.

And now all of a sudden I hear it all the time.

And Andrea, the phrase is all the things?

Right.

-huh.

All the things.

All the things.

Well, I have some guesses on this.

So the way I’m hearing it being used is kind of a summary.

And it almost sounds like the modern use of what not and what not, which means like all the things I just said, plus some things I haven’t mentioned.

Right.

All the things I haven’t mentioned that you know.

Yeah, you know.

You’re basically saying you know to the other person.

You get it because we have something in common.

I don’t have to explain in detail because you and I understand each other.

Exactly. Right.

Gotcha.

But the other thing that occurs to me is, so yeah, I think there’s something there happening maybe with a correspondence to the way we use whatnot.

You know, people just use this at the end of a long string of things.

But also it reminds me of the meme, all the things from like 2010.

There was a comic titled This Is Why I’ll Never Be an Adult by Allie Brosh, published in 2010 on the blog Hyperbole and a Half.

You may know this.

And it’s got this cartoony character with this intense expression kind of manically saying that they’re going to do all the things, all the things with exclamation marks.

It’s just kind of this energetic kind of approach to ambitiously tackle an entire set of activities, like clean the house.

I’m going to clean all the house.

I’m going to do all the things.

And it sounded like very adult.

It sounded like adulting.

Yeah, it definitely is.

It’s adulting.

Yeah.

But it’s also this idea that you get so caught up in your enthusiasm for your activities that you you unreasonably take on more than you can really handle.

You know, your enthusiasm far exceeds your energy and your capabilities.

You guys must know me or something.

I think it’s the human condition, Andrea.

Looked into my soul through the phone and you called it out.

It was a huge meme.

It was huge.

And it’s still a reference today.

We use it in my house.

Martha, do you use it?

All of the things.

I haven’t used it in a very long time.

But I remember the first time I saw that cartoon, I just laughed and laughed because this character is just so extreme.

I’m going to clean all the things.

And we all identify with this little bug-eyed guy or gal.

We’re like, yeah, that’s me sometimes.

I just get manic and want to do it all.

There’s no way you’re going to be able to do it all.

But, you know, sometimes that’s the only way you can operate is to have these real unreasonable expectations for yourself.

Yeah, it’s kind of like a pep talk.

Yeah, exactly.

I thought it interesting after I found that, that I just felt, oh, I guess it’s having a resurgence with people that I guess didn’t sit back in 2010.

Those of us that are behind the curve.

Well, you know, everything’s new to everyone at some point.

But I will say the usage that you describe, that you use among your mob group and your friend group, is different than that cartoon.

And it sounds like there’s some lexicalization that’s happened here, which means it’s now become almost idiomatic.

And it’s entered, those three words have entered kind of as a unit into the language.

And they’re undergoing a bit of a transformation.

Yeah, I guess from that 2010 little, basically just funniness came full circle.

Yeah, and tons of spinoffs and people memeing the meme as they do and having their fun with it.

Well, Andrea, thank you so much.

Give us a call again sometime.

It was real nice to talk to you.

I appreciate you guys.

Love your show.

Thanks so much.

Thank you.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, Andrea.

Bye-bye.

Well, when it comes to language, we talk about all the things.

All the things.

You can find out of our handles and the link to that cartoon on our website at waywordradio.org.