Your Life Depends On It
Have you ever had someone telling you a hypothetical situation and during it the phrase “What if your life depended on it?!” came up?
Like a lot of times you hear it in school. Like you’re a student and you’re having trouble with math and you talk to your teacher after class. You ask her, “Miss Wormwood? I’m having trouble with math, I don’t think I can learn this.”
She replies with, “But Billy, you HAVE to! What if your life DEPENDED on it?!”
I’m sorry, but is there EVER going to be a moment in my life where fractions may save me from impending doom? Am I going to be on a de-railing train at some point and have to think “Ok, there’s only 4 exits and 32 people, there’s only 7 seconds left, how many people have to fit through these doors in order to get them all out on time before the train blows up?” NO! That’s never gonna happen! It’s just like people who say “It’s a matter of life in death” in a complete and absolute non life or death situation. The only time you should be using either of these is if you’re held up at gun point, and call your friend and say, “You need to get here with this amount of money NOW, it’s a matter of life and death, and my life depends on it!”
A matter of life and death. Give me a break. People say these things at the most stupid time too, don’t they? They’ll be in the office and suddenly they look up at the clock and realize “OH MY GOD, IT’S 7:27, I’M NOT GOING TO BE HOME FOR THE PRICE IS RIGHT!” and they call up their wife and say, “HONEY, RECORD IT, IT’S A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH!” What if the guy misses it, is his head going to explode? I hate people who use the wrong phrases at the wrong times. Like that same guy goes into work on Monday after having been seriously ill and not completed the important report for that board meeting that afternoon. He tells his friend Jim, “Man, I am SO dead.”
Is he going to walk into that meeting room and be murdered? His boss will be like, “HENDERSON! WHERE IS THAT REPORT?”
“I’m sorry sir, I couldn’t finish it, my appendix burst and-”
“I DON’T WANT YOUR EXCUSES, YOU KNOW HOW IMPORTANT THAT REPORT WAS! WE MADE A DEAL! MEN, TAKE HENDERSONS SOUL AND HEART FROM HIM!”
I REALLY doubt that’s going to happen. I know this post has been a little more comedy based than usual, but sometimes I need to do one of those to juggle the extremely dark and serious posts with some light comedy. It has to be done.
It’s a matter of life and death.
m@rk
