Such success

In keeping with my father's admonition that “if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything”, I have refrained for more than a year from adding to the pile of screed you may have seen here.

But my problem is not that I can't say anything nice, but rather that I can't say anything clever. Given the number of websites that repeat wise quotations from everyone from the John Adams to Frank Zappa, I feel like The Preacher who proclaimed that 

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. “_Ecclesiastes 1:9 KJV

Well, that's kind of depressing, but strangely reassuring, if you stop to think about it. 

So when someone says, “Hey man, what's new”, I guess I'm supposed to reply, “Same old same old.” Or I could just say, “Wait for it.” But that could get old really quickly.

It does amaze me, though, the cleverness of those quotation innovators who lurk all over the internet. Example:

“If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.”

 In my dad's day, that would have been “If at first you don't succeed, suck eggs”, possibly because sucking eggs predates skydiving by several generations.

  I forget how many years it was before I saw the connection between the “suck seed” and “succeed” parts. Even more time passed before I understood that “teaching your grandmother to suck eggs” was the equivalent of saying “try telling her something she doesn't already know.”

I was certain my grandma sucked eggs, until I observed her technique. She pieced both ends, enlarged both holes, and blew the innards out of the eggs, rather than sucking them.  The yoke was on me.  

Today marks the 71^st year since I took up planetary space, so I am working very hard on doing something that I have never done before, namely, creating a clever internet-worthy quotation. I figure it will likely take me a year, so you're invited back here, same time, same place next year to watch me suck seed or suck eggs.

(Man, that was a mouthful).