Thursday, July 11, 2013

leery of the loudmouth

“I had my leeriance about it,” the big dude told the three lapdogs gathered around him at the bar like he was some rockstar messiah. Listening in absentmindedly up until that point from his stool halfway down the bar, Jaffy figured the big dude meant he was leery about some particular thing. It was an appalling abuse of the standard idiom. Who makes up such a thing? Where does the verbal confusion come from that yields such a phrase? And more to the point: why not just say you were leery?
Although leery was a queer word, Jaffy had to give the big guy that much. One of those words you might not be 100 percent about its meaning. And you never wanted to say you were something if you weren’t sure what that something was. Still the blowhard in question didn't appear to warrant the benefit of the doubt.
Jaffy just couldn't see this local Mr. Popular going through at some level a similar thought process while holding court and slamming Jaegermeister shots with his coterie. Still, "never underestimate the human brain," thought Jaffy, who immediately amended that idea to “never doubt the power of the subconscious,” for Jaffy wasn’t prepared to give the joker credit for using his brain in any way other than a strictly reptilian fashion.