The Class Was So Hard! How Hard Was It?

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Perrott.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Back when Johnny Carson was host of The Tonight Show, he had this schtick where he’d start a sentence with something like,

It was so cold.

And then the audience would respond with, How cold was it?

Right. I remember that one big chant.

How cold was it?

Right. And then Carson would say goofy things like,

It was so cold, the ice cubes were wearing earmuffs.

That’s very goofy, and I could just see him mugging.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Well, I was thinking, what if we take that idea and we expand it to other areas of interest to our listeners, or at least to us?

Okay.

Like, I don’t know, that language class was so hard.

How hard was it?

It was so hard, even the silent letters complained.

Oh, how hard was it?

Even the subjunctive was in a bad mood.

Oh, how hard was it?

Are you going to make me do this again?

All the nouns were accusative?

I don’t know.

Okay, they were accusing you of crimes.

Primes against language.

But you could also take this idea and say this audio book I listened to was so long.

How long was it?

This audiobook was so long, it had an intermission.

Yeah, but we need a drummer.

But I think, Martha, that our listeners will be better at this idea than you and I.

I think you are correct.

So we’re going to throw this out to you.

Take Carson’s idea of this X was so difficult or so hard or so long that something funny happened, you know, upon a play on words.

And toss it our way. We’ll see what happens, all right? You can send in an email,

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