If someone is two plums short of a Happy Meal—or more commonly, two french fries short of a Happy Meal—they’re they’re not playing with a full deck. In fact, such good-natured teases are sometimes called fulldeckisms. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Short of a Happy Meal”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Tierney. How are you?
Hi, Tierney.
Hi, Tierney. Where are you calling from?
Doing well.
Yeah, I’m calling from Charlottesville, Virginia.
Oh, welcome to the show.
Great.
How are things in Charlottesville?
I work for a new home builder in Charlottesville. And first of all, I love my boss. He’s just wonderful. But we are very active with Habitat for Humanity. So in March of this year, we had a company Habitat build. So, of course, everybody from the office sales on down went on the job site, and, of course, you have to wear a hard hat.
Well, my hard hat fell off, and I asked a co-worker to assemble the insert for me, and they’re really, really hard to put together. So he struggles with it, and he puts it on, and it feels great. About an hour later, I went to the ladies’ room, and I looked in the mirror, and my hard hat was sitting about 12 inches above my head. It looked ridiculous, just like Jiffy Pop.
So I go back up to the build site, and I said to my boss, Frank, why didn’t you tell me I look like this? And Frank said to me, T, I was thinking you were looking too plum shy of a Happy Meal. And I looked at him, and I was like, what? And he often uses two plums shy from a Happy Meal, two fries shy of a Happy Meal, or a cheeseburger shy of a Happy Meal. And I am dying to find out where did this phrase come from.
I think it came from the need to address situations like yours.
Yeah, the jiffy-pop head. And might I say, I’m considerably older than my boss.
Okay. We have a name for these kinds of expressions that your boss uses. We did an episode that was very popular a couple years ago. We call them full deckisms because it comes from the expression, she’s one card shy of a full deck, you know? She’s a full deck except for the aces.
Is the Happy Meal, is that a regional thing or an age thing?
No, that’s the McDonald’s thing.
That’s the McDonald’s thing. Yeah, that’s a post-McDonald’s thing. It didn’t exist prior to McDonald’s. That’s pretty much where it comes from.
I’ve never seen plums in a Happy Meal. You could say one cheap plastic toy shy of a Happy Meal. It ain’t really a bad shy. But the two cheeseburgers I’ve heard are cheeseburgers shy of a Happy Meal. I’ve seen that one and heard that one. A few fries short of a Happy Meal.
But it’s pretty cool because you’ve given us three variations that your boss uses, which really demonstrate kind of in this small way how we all play with the language. We change it, even though there have never been plums in Happy Meals as far as I know.
Why not?
No, not that I know of. That one sounds as outlandish as one I saw recently, which was a few fish short of a hat stand.
Ooh, I love that one.
Right. Utterly mysterious. No sense. That’s like the fur coffee cup, right? It’s just very absurd.
That’s so funny. Are these phrases regarding shy of a Happy Meal, is it used all over the United States, or is it regional? Are you familiar with where it may have just originated in terms of the Happy Meal?
No, the Happy Meal one we don’t know, but the larger group of these full deckisms, these kind of euphemistic ways of saying somebody’s not that bright or not that with it.
Yeah, which is great. Yeah, also the origins of those are kind of lost in time, except there’s always been this culture of kind of teasing your best friends and family in a way that kind of points out how dumb they are, but with love. These generally aren’t said to be mean.
Well, I do know it was dumb with love because I love my boss and you better love me. They’re usually not mean because you are trying to hide the fact that you don’t think that other person really is all there.
Yeah, it’s just kind of a gentle poke.
A gentle poke. A little nudge. A pickle shy of a bucket or whatever it is.
Yeah, a few pickles short of a jar.
Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so much, and I really appreciate the information, and I hope you are not too plumb shy of a Happy Meal today.
Me neither.
Take care now.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for the story.
Thanks.
Bye-bye.
Okay.
Bye-bye.
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