A Wisconsin listener remembers a boss who used to use an odd expression whenever he wanted to change the subject of a discussion. The boss would say, “Well, wet birds don’t fly at night,” then switch to another subject. Grant explains what the term likely means. Hint: Not much! This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Wet Birds Don’t Fly at Night”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Chris Jameson in Racine, Wisconsin.
Well, Chris, what would you like to talk about?
I’m interested in finding out if you know the definitive answer to the meaning of a saying or a phrase that I heard years ago.
And that phrase is, wet birds don’t fly at night.
What in the world does that mean, Chris?
And where did you hear that?
Well, I had a boss when I first started my career many years ago.
He used the phrase in a couple meetings with a small group of people.
And finally after a couple of meetings I asked my co-workers in private,
What does he mean by this phrase?
None of them knew what he had meant.
We were all just sitting there nodding as if we understood what he was talking about,
And we had no clue what he meant.
How many years ago was that?
Probably 30 years.
30 years. And what field?
We’re in education.
Education, okay.
He was a school administrator, and we were a group of teachers.
I love this.
There’s a whole group of teachers sitting around the table,
And the guy’s saying, wet birds don’t fly at night,
And everybody’s nodding along, saying, mm-mm-right, right.
And nobody knew.
But in response to what?
What kind of thing would he reply to when he said that?
Well, I had the feeling it was when he wanted to move on from one agenda item to another.
He wanted to tie up one item and move on to the next.
He’d say, well, wet birds don’t fly at night.
And then we’d all nod, and we’d move on to something else.
That’s how I remember it.
Right.
30 years ago.
Yes, yes, exactly.
Well, let me tell you a small story and see if this helps, all right?
Okay.
You might not remember him.
Comedian Jackie Vernon was famous for a time.
He died in 1987.
He used to tell a joke with this punchline,
And as a matter of fact, he told it in 1965 on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
And the joke in its short version is this.
A man climbs a mountain to visit a guru and asks about the secret of life.
The guru says, my son, a wet bird never flies at night.
And the man says, that’s it?
I come all this way?
And you say that wet birds don’t fly at night?
The wise man says, surprise, do you mean to tell me that wet birds do fly at night?
And the way Jackie Vernon tells the story, the wise man then gave up being wise and went to Istanbul and lived with an exotic dancer.
And the point of this story.
Ba-dum-bum.
Yeah, that’s the thing.
The point of this story is that the line, a wet bird never flies at night, is meaningless.
I believe that’s the whole point of it.
It’s like a Zen koan.
Do you know these?
K-O-A-N.
Not like K-O-H-E-N, but K-O-A-N.
A Zen koan is an anecdotal riddle that really kind of just exposes how inadequate our own logic and reasoning powers are.
And so when you throw this into conversation, it does the same thing.
It’s just a non sequitur.
It’s contentless.
It’s meaningless.
It’s only there just to have a transition to something else or to puzzle people.
Maybe it’s a little bit of a joke.
So the joke’s been on me for 30 years.
I’ve been trying to figure out what he meant by it, and it didn’t mean anything.
Well, the whole idea of Zen Cohen’s is that there’s honor and enlightenment to be found
And reasoning out things that actually don’t have an answer.
Oh, boy, Chris, I have this feeling that executives all over the country are going to be using this to end meetings.
Well, I haven’t heard anyone use it since then, or I never heard it used before.
So it’s just always a one-time experience for me.
Yeah, I hope that you’re not too disappointed.
And I do think that there’s some value in mulling things over, even if you’ll never arrive at the answer.
What is the meaning of life? Why are we here?
Well, they’re actually really good questions to put your brain on.
Yes, well, I think he used it appropriately, and I just didn’t realize at the time what it meant.
Well, thank you very much.
All right.
Thank you so much, Sarah.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
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