Imponderables
(Some things that keep me up at night)
I really enjoy imponderables. Not the more cerebral ones (e.g., what happened before the Big Bang?), but the more everyday ones some of which I’m sure you’ve seen or heard. An example of one of the most familiar imponderables is the classic why do we drive on parkways but park in driveways.
To be fair, that isn’t a true imponderable, as it is simply a play on words. Those are fun, but not truly imponderable. Some others in the play-on-words category include:
“What disease did cured ham actually have?”
“If a deaf person has to go to court, is it still called a hearing?”
“Why is the third hand on the watch called the second hand?”
Then, there’s the group I call the silly imponderables. These are plays on words or ideas designed as funny throwaway lines. Such as:
“Why do doctors leave the room while you change? They’re going to see you naked anyway.”
“Speaking of doctors, why do they say they’re practicing? Aren’t they supposed to know what they’re doing?”
“If a parsley farmer is sued, can they garnish his wages?”
“Why are you in a movie, but you’re on TV?”
“Why does Goofy stand erect and talks while Pluto remains on all fours and barks? They’re both dogs, after all.”
“If Wiley E. Coyote had enough money to buy all that ACME equipment, why didn’t he just buy a road runner?”
“If the professor on Gilligan’s Island could make a radio out of a coconut, why couldn’t he fix a hole in a boat?”
For me, the true imponderables–the ones I relish–are those seemingly oddball questions that really beg for answers. They might appear as humorous, but cannot be dismissed solely as such. The World Wide Web is a treasure trove for this category. To wit:
· How important does a person have to be before they are considered assassinated instead of just murdered?
· Why do you “put your two cents in,” but it’s only a “penny for your thoughts”? When and why did your thoughts lose half their value?
· How is it that we were able to put an astronaut on the moon before we figured out it would be a good idea to put wheels on luggage?
· Why are the letters of the alphabet in the order they’re in? Who decided that and why did everyone agree?
· Why do toasters always have a setting that burns bread beyond the point when anyone would eat it?
· If as advertised Snickers satisfy, why do they make a king size version?
· Why does dog food have to smell so awful?
· Why is a carrot more orange than an orange and yet wasn’t named such?
· Is it immoral for vegetarians to eat animal crackers?
· If a word were misspelled in the dictionary, how would we ever know?
· Why are ‘wise man’ and ’wise guy’ opposites?
· Doesn’t ‘expecting the unexpected” make the unexpected expected?
· At what word or page count does a short story become a regular story?
· If Shakespeare was right when he wrote that all the world is a stage, where was his audience sitting?
· Why do we read left to right yet turn pages right to left?
· Is it possible to imagine a world with no hypothetical situations?
· Why are they called buildings, when they’re already finished? Shouldn’t they be called builts?
· Why do ‘overlook’ and ‘oversee’ mean opposite things?
· Why do we wash bath towels? Aren’t we clean when we use them?
· Tell me: why can we be overwhelmed and underwhelmed, but when things are normal we never say we’re whelmed?
Finally, there’s one that drives me bonkers. Although it appears humorous, it has haunted me as an imponderable for several decades. Simply stated (and slightly edited),
“Why are there more horses’ butts than there are horses?”
This week’s Street Advertising Smile:
