Years ago I lived in an apartment block in Waterloo. The building manager was a bloke named George Vlahos. Vlahos was of Greek heritage, and thick set. He wore wraparound sunnies, a soul patch, and a robust cologne. He wasn’t a great building manager, but we always had entertaining conversations.
One such time we were talking about the cost of car repairs - I think I was complaining about replacing the transmission on our Jeep. He said that the cost of parts is even greater for European cars. And then after saying that he said the following thing:
“Mate I always say, ‘If you wanna wear lace panties…you gotta have a lace arse.’ Ya know what I mean? If you wanna have something fancy, ya gotta be able to back it up. The original saying is ‘If you wanna wear lace panties, you gotta have a nice arse’ but I like to say ‘a lace arse’…”
Years later I’m still thinking about this remark, and have many questions. Why does he think his version is an improvement on the original? What does he mean when he says ‘a lace arse’? I’m pretty sure he doesn’t mean an arse made out of lace. I think he means an arse suited to lace - a lace-quality arse. But surely that’s just a nice arse? The original saying seems to work well. His tweak just adds some repetition and some confusion. But he likes the tweak enough to not only change the saying, but specifically call out to me what the tweak is. He wants me to know his ‘build’.
It was so baffling. But I can’t call the guy stupid. At the end of the day, I am still thinking about this conversation 10 years later. My wife and I still use the saying - his version! I’m not sure we would be doing that had he quoted the sensical version of the saying. (side note: it might be a stretch to call it a saying as I’ve never heard anyone else drop it in conversation - before or since)
I don’t really have a larger, intelligent point to make other than to say that this anecdote kinda supports a longheld belief I have that linguistic clunkiness and wrong-ness can play an important role in achieving cut through and memorability. It creates a cognitive dissonance that we can’t help but pay attention to, and linger on. Shit, I’ve lingered on this one for a decade.