Andrea in West Palm Beach, Florida, recalls a little ditty that her father would recite to get her out of bed in the morning: When in the morning you throw moments away, you can’t make them up in the course of the day. Or you can hurry and scurry and flurry and worry, but you’ve lost them forever and ever a day. It’s a form of a little poem that appears in Anna Sewell’s 1877 novelBlack Beauty (Bookshop|Amazon), which features Jerry Barker, driver of a horse-drawn cab. Barker loathed when other drivers would dawdle and then try to make up time by cruelly driving their horse hard. So he would sing little songs to himself that encouraged him not to waste time. One of them went: If you in the morning throw minutes away, you can’t pick them up in the course of the day. You may hurry and scurry and flurry and worry. You’ve lost them forever, forever and aye.This is part of a complete episode.
In the 1970s, talk-show host Johnny Carson had a recurring bit where he’d declare, “It was so cold…” to which the audience would respond, “How cold was it?” Carson always offered a goofy response, such as “It was so cold the ice cubes were wearing...
Lindsay in San Diego, California, says some of her younger coworkers use the phrase out of pocket to mean “unavailable,” but she’s also heard it used to mean “acting out of line.” The meaning of this phrase usually involves one of three things...
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