JACK PARKS: The things that keep me awake at night

People often wonder, and sometimes ask me straight up why I am the way I am. Where do I come up with the things that I say? What was the line of thought that led me from the main topic to the seemingly unrelated tangent I ended up on? How did I get from point A to point 37?

If they only knew the questions that keep me up at night, it would probably answer a lot. I have an overactive brain, and my thoughts tend to latch onto certain subjects and run away on wild tangents. There was a book I read as a child about a train who jumped off the tracks and spent his days away in a field smelling the flowers. That’s how I describe my train of thought to people.

Sometimes seemingly simple things send me spiraling into a swirling sea of study and scrutinization. Apologies for the alliteration, although admittedly it’s amusing.

But yes, sometimes it’s the simplest things that bother me the most. Things like common phrases that we use or hear everyday, that we never think twice about. Well, at least you don’t. I think about them probably twice a night, and I’d like to share my thoughts with you now.

“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

First off, how did you get a bird into your hand in the first place? Why is it there? Why are you so worried about birds? Who cares about the birds in the bush? For that matter, who cares about the bird in your hand? Again, why is it even there?

Is it even your hand? Whose hand are we talking about here? Is it just a random, severed hand laying around that the bird happens to be sitting in? If so, it’s probably not a bird that you want, which means it’s probably not a bird anyone wants, so it’s probably not very valuable to begin with.

Which means it’s probably worth less than the bird in the bush, who at the very least isn’t sitting in a severed hand. And there’s two of them, so it’s very likely that the bird in the hand is worth considerably less.

Are the birds in the bush the same kinds of bird or are they different? And why are they in the bush? Were they just flying by and happened to decide to make out in the bush when the bird in the hand appeared?

Or were they originally with the first bird before he started messing around with the severed hand and they got creeped out by his weird fascination so they went and hid? Did they leave the severed hand there for the other bird to find in a conspiracy to frame him? What is going on in this situation?

“Happy as a clam”

What? Apart from Dr. Doolittle, who has ever spoken to a clam to even be able to judge what state of mind they’re in? You could talk all day at one, but I doubt it would respond. Even if it did, how would you understand it? Is there a Rosetta Stone program just for clams?

There’s only one clam I know of that had emotions, and that was the angry clam. He wasn’t very happy. And yet the expression is intended to imply satisfaction and contentment.

“Took everything but the kitchen sink”

This is just weird. It implies that not only did you take everything but the kitchen sink, but that wherever you took it to literally only had a kitchen sink there. If you’re going to go to that much trouble why don’t you just get rid of that one and bring yours along with you?

What are the chances someone else only wants your kitchen sink? And for that matter, how much of the sink did you leave behind? Is it just the basin part of it, or is the faucet included? Is the faucet still connected to the plumbing or did you take the plumbing with you?

Is there still a counter top attached to it? Cabinets underneath? Or is it just sitting on an otherwise empty floor, in an otherwise empty room, in an otherwise empty house? Or are we going literal, and the house is gone as well?

I don’t see how you can expect this to be a profitable exchange. And good luck finding a Realtor to help with it.

The song “Black Magic Woman”

Is he talking about a Black Magic-Woman, like a voodoo queen or something of the like? Or a Black-Magic Woman, an evil sorceress?

“More trees than you can shake a stick at”

Not necessarily trees, but really anything the speaker uses to convey a large number of.

How exactly does this work? Since there are more than you can shake a stick at, this implies that there are in fact a set number of trees at which you are able to shake said stick. But what is this number? How did they arrive at it?

Did someone just go around shaking sticks at progressively larger groupings of trees until he found a group so large he could not shake a stick at it? Or was it sequential, like he went through a forest shaking his stick at each individual tree until he reached a certain number and was no longer able to do so?

Does it depend on the size or shape of the stick? Like, maybe I can’t shake one stick, but if I found a stick with a different shake quotient it would do the job? Or what if I had two sticks? Does that increase the number I can shake a stick at?

What if it’s me and a friend? Is the number at which we can shake the stick fixed, or do we each get that amount? For instance, if a given stick can only be shaken at four trees, if my friend and I are together do we still have the same four trees to work with, or can we combine for eight trees total?

Do different items have different limitations? Supposing there were more trees than I could shake a stick at, could I then take that same stick and shake it at the same number of dogs or would that also be too many?

And what’s the nature of this restriction to begin with? Is it legal or physical? Would someone simply get tired of shaking the stick at so many trees, or is there some other factor at play that prevents you from shaking it?

These are just some of the thoughts that plague me into the wee hours of the night. I’d love to hear what some of you guys think. If you have any answers to offer, or if you have questions yourselves, feel free to let me know. Follow Talk Nerdy To Me on Facebook and we’ll be able to discuss these and other questions in depth.

Jack Parks is … umm … probably getting too little sleep now that he’s got the new baby around the house. Either that, or he is very disturbed … or maybe a genius on a far different plain — or plane, if he’s flying — than we are.