McDonald: Expression masters a special group

You know what they say.

What goes around comes around.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Tom McDonald

And I’ll be a monkey’s uncle if that ain’t true.

I’ve picked up a lot of old sayings through the years, and the older I get the more I recite them. At least, I quote the ones I’ve come to believe in.

I was using the relatively new truism “it is what it is” for a while — until I saw the movie St. Vincent and realized Bill Murray’s character was spot-on when he said what it really means: You’re screwed and you’re gonna stay screwed. So I dropped it from my repertoire of clichés, not wanting to sound so negative.

But I still find myself using the far more negative expression, “Life’s a” … er, female dog … “and then you die.”

Some sayings are brilliant, and are often attributed to famous people. Abe Lincoln gave us insight into the American electorate with, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time,” but it was probably a ghostwriter who gave John Kennedy his famous words, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

It’s the “ask not” twist-of-phrase that makes it work. If JFK had started by saying, “Do not ask what your country can do for you …” well, that seems too preachy to me. Or maybe it would have insulted part of his base, sounding too much like an attack on entitlement programs. Too Republican, I suppose, for a Democrat.

And speaking of partisanship, here’s another great Kennedy quote: “Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer.” Unfortunately, those words never became quite as famous.

There are plenty of localized sayings. I first heard the saying, “Behind every successful rancher is a wife who works in town” in northern New Mexico, while I’ve heard “if you don’t like the weather here, wait a few minutes and it’ll change” in just about every place I’ve ever lived. I guess some sayings sound more local than they really are.

The fact is, “they” say the darnedest things. The master creators of lasting expressions should have a club.

I’d like to apply for membership with a saying of my own: “A man’s home may be his castle, but it’s still his wife’s house.”

Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:

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