Catching the Sun

Have you ever sat back and thought for a moment about some of the things people say? It's a wonder non-native speakers can even begin to grasp our language. We make it so confusing it actually hurts my head when I sit back and try to think why we say half the things we say. This all dawned on me this morning when I was out being completely lazy and floating around on an inflatable raft in the pool (gotta love the summer). After two hours of doing nothing but floating, then rolling over, then floating, then rolling over, I decided it was time to get out. On a side note, I'm not a fan of suntan lotion. I don't like how it feels on my skin. That said, at two hours in 97 degree heat floating on a raft, I was fairly burned. I got out the pool and spoke the sentence that left me thinking all the way up until now: "Look at that, I think I may have caught the sun..."

Caught the sun. That just makes no sense what so ever. You can't catch the sun. It's a giant mass of hydrogen floating up in the centre of our solar system! It's huge! The only conceivable process of catching a sun that I can come up with would be with a giant net and a giant glass jar. Think of the sun as a really big, highly explosive firefly. We'd need to find a net that can withstand incredible heat, and then a jar that's either so huge the sun's heat won't touch the sides, or a jar that can also withstand the unbearable heat. I don't know where we'd find such a jar... Still, catching the sun in a bottle could be fun.

This raised questions of other comments similar in nature to my catching of the sun. "I laughed my head off" is one of them. Who, in the whole history of human kind, has laughed so hard their head has actually come off? Anyone? If you can find historical documentation of someone's head actually being severed from their neck through laughter, I would allow this one to remain, but simple biology states that this is incredibly unlikely. I'm not saying impossible, because nothing is impossible, I'm simply stating that the odds are very much against this actually happening.

Also, another one I've been hearing rather recently is "I'm on cloud nine". What does that even mean?! It has something to do with being happy, but it doesn't even make sense! It just... well, it bugs me. I am a native born speaker of the English language, and I simply refuse to accept this as a legitimate expression.

These are just a few that have been haunting me recently. Which ones do you use and not even realize you're doing it? Pay attention next time, and maybe you'll be a little ashamed of yourself for speaking such nonsense. I know I am.