Back when George W. Bush was a student at a New England prep school, he took to the thesaurus to impress a teacher, and wound up using a synonym for the wrong meaning for tear. Hence, the telltale phrase lacerates falling from my eyes wound up in one of his papers. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Lacerates Falling from My Eyes”
Continuing our conversation about using a thesaurus, I was looking at a memoir that talked about this guy’s experience of going to a prep school in New England and feeling insecure.
And so he used a thesaurus when he was writing this paper.
And he wrote, it was a story about emotions.
And I was trying to find a unique way to describe tears running down my face.
My discussion of lacerates falling from my eyes did catch the teacher’s attention, but not in the way I had hoped.
So, of course, he wrote he was looking for a synonym for tears.
And he looked up tear instead of tears.
Yeah. And you know who that was?
Who was it?
Former president George W. Bush. He writes about that in his book, A Charge to Keep.
Yeah. He’s not alone, right? So many of us that did that. Always looking for… You feel like you’re not good enough when you write for other people, don’t you?
Yeah. You always want to put on your best face and maybe… It’s like renting a tux. You’re renting nicer clothes than you actually own when you take these words that you don’t really have in your vocabulary.
Yeah. That’s a good analogy.
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