Day 11: Kill a Horse

Over the past few years I've actively noticed the fact that I use odd little phrases I've picked up from my parents all the time. I'm sure I've been doing this for years, but I've only really clocked it in the past year. It's not an unusual trait by any means: what do you call the TV remote in your house?

Obviously, I call the TV remote 'The Blobber', because it lets you blob between channels. I also rarely serve food without declaring it 'untouched by human foot'. Dangerous Pastries are a family favourite. My brother only found out last month that 'Bellybuttons' were actually called 'Tortellini'. These are just a few examples of the vast wealth of mildly strange things my mother has drilled into my brain over the years - hardly surprising considering she's a woman who gets paid to make up words and dress up like a chicken (her words, not mine).

I don't know how most of these phrases came about exactly, but at their origin they all seem to be based on mutation. You change a few words in a phrase, and somehow it sticks - overwriting the original version in your brain. From that point onwards you always seem to find yourself (often awkwardly) automatically using the quirky bespoke version of this well known phrase that your brain has decided is evidently superior to the original. The most salient of these will stick with you for life, and 20 years later your children will find themselves suddenly realising that a phrase they've been using for years makes no fucking sense at all.

One phrase I seem to be solely responsible for however, is one day going to get me into a lot of trouble - chain of mutation below:

"I'm so hungry, I could eat a horse."

- Standard. Safe. Won't offend geriatrics. It then mutates into two separate phrases:

"I'm so hungry, I could kill a horse."
"I'm so hungry, I could eat a whore."

- These, I can live with. I'd argue that there's humour to be found in both of these statements, as dark as they may be. But lately I've noticed my brain has handily saved space by merging the above to create a fantastic new omniphrase:

"I'm so hungry, I could kill a whore."

This is something I have actually, genuinely said in public. More than once. There's no comic depth to it as a statement - it genuinely just makes no fucking sense. It's the kind of utterance you'd find scrawled in the diary of a man who's hobbies include KILLING WOMEN WITH A CLAW HAMMER. And yet I have genuinely said this in public, more than once. Part of my brain has decided this is something that is an ENTIRELY ACCEPTABLE thing to say when offered a slice of birthday cake. I've also found myself using many of the above as being an apparently viable solution for relieving fatigue. That's right: I'm so tired, I could eat a horse. I'm so tired, I could kill a prostitute. Fucksake, brain.

If I can't even begin to justify any of this stuff to myself. So how the hell am I going to explain it when it gets brought up at a parents evening in 2025?