I swear I’m not making this up.

About a year and 1/2 ago I had this boss.  We’ll call him Ray.  Ray was such a nice guy, but nice guys don’t always cut it.  He has been compared on a regular basis to a Labrador retriever – big heart, always happy to see you, while his stupid tail is all the while knocking your glass of wine on the floor.

One day I was in a meeting with him and several other VPs of the company I was then working for.  They were planning an event for Black History Month and wanted permission to bring in vendors to sell traditional African food.  Ray’s response was that he would be ok with this is as long as they were really ethnical. 

Hm.

Ethnical?  I thought to myself.  Is that the actual word?  Surely I have not had that wrong my entire life.  Is he mixing ethical and ethnic?  I decided to keep this to myself in the event that I was, in fact, an idiot. 

About a week later he decided to share the plan with the rest of our staff and was talking, once again, about the ethnical vendors.  At this point I decided to lock in on my friend and colleague who is the queen of linguistics.  Sure enough, there it was.  A look of disbelief promptly followed by her hurriedly writing something down.  Ah, yes, I’m not an idiot.  Few.

Little did we know that ethnical was just the start.  Today, my friends, I share with some Rayisms.  Do you know what they mean?

I was out there on Planet Nine. 

A dollar late & a penny short.

He came to work every day dressed to the hills.

I’ll fight it left and tooth.

I want to refresh it in a different mannerism.

They need to get us in skew for getting signs.

We need to look at those like a fine tooth comb.

They’ll make out like a banshee!

I don’t want to get caught with my hands down.

He was electrocuted because he wasn’t a licensed electritioner.

We lock it up like a drum.

Please make sure your area is working like a fine, oiled machine.

Six of one, seven dozen of another.

And this is an actual conversation:

Me: It was a dinner for a Moot court.
him with quizzical look
Me:  Moot.  Like mock. Like not of any value. Moot point
Him: Oooooooh. You mean mute.
Me: ah….yeah……shake my head an walk away.

(note: post-spell check….you can only imagine the red lines that just showed up on this one!!)

~ by zuzu on November 15, 2007.