Why We Can't Have Nice Phrases

I love idioms. Things like “break a leg,” “the cat’s out of the bag,” or “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” start my brain firing. It’s almost like a challenge to construct the most ridiculous situation possible that would support these farcical phrases.

Take “bury the hatchet.” Officially, it means to make peace. To set aside a grievance and agree, in a spirit of goodwill, that whatever unpleasantness occurred between two parties is behind us.

And so I drew Carl. A man with the muscle mass of a mature bison and the cognitive processing speed of wet cardboard.

Carl understood none of this.

In his defense though, the chief was commonly know as “Barry the Hatchet.”