George Pelletier

I’ve been fighting a summer cold for a couple of days and unlike most men, I’m not a whiner when I get sick. And if you’re a guy and you’re not a whiner, I don’t mean to offend. When I’m coming down with something, I tend to hibernate with the remote control and all the over-the-counter meds I can stuff in my bathrobe pockets. I don’t want soup. I don’t want crackers or dry toast. I have a cold. I haven’t come down with the plague.

I think wives might say that their husbands are babies when they get a cold. I’m not sure about that, but I’ll stir the pot anyway.

One rule of thumb that I follow: Never take NyQuil until you’re physically in bed. I took it in the kitchen one night and woke up on the floor hours later. Now I know why they call it the nighttime, sniffling, sneezing, aching, coughing, stuffy-head, fever so you can pass out on the kitchen floor in a puddle of your own sweat and drool medicine. Why they don’t package this stuff in a hip flask is beyond me.

“Sick as a dog” dates back to the 1700s, when it was acceptable to compare miserable things to dogs. They could have easily said “Sick as a Henry” or someone else’s name. It was the 1700s for crying out loud. There was smallpox, cholera and yellow fever. I don’t remember the last time a dog came down with the plague. (And perhaps the original name of the Disney movie might have been, “Old Yeller Fever.”)

“The dog’s dinner” is another that throws me. My dog eats all his food with no complaints and frequently several burps. “The dog’s dinner” means scraps. I’ve seen people in a restaurant take half a filet mignon home in a doggy bag. Doggy bags were first used as a polite way of asking to take restaurant leftovers home. Now it’s all I can think about between the time we leave the restaurant and my midnight snack.

“Gone to the dogs” is a favorite political phrase as in, “With the last administration, the country really went to the dogs.” Interestingly, it’s a reference to greyhound racing and the dangers of gambling. A person who’s said to have “gone to the dogs” is likely to be blowing their entire paycheck betting ono the dog races. I’d say, gee I don’t know, if you pay for Russian hookers, you’ve gone to the dogs a few times. I think hush money would imply the same.

“Let sleeping dogs lie” literally means, leave the damn dog alone. He’s sleeping. Check if he’s just sleeping once in a while. Unless you’re an amateur taxidermist.

“It’s a dog-eat-dog-world, and I’m wearing Milk Bone underwear,” Cheers’ Norm Peterson used to say. Feeling a little cynical? This phrase appears first in American books published around the beginning of the 20th century and is used to describe situations where someone will do anything to be successful. Think Michael Corleone in the Godfather II.

“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Hmmm. I never hit the laundry basket with my boxer shorts, does that count?

“His bark is worse than his bite.” Whoever came up with this never had a face-to-face with Milton Berle. The man could gnaw trees into toothpicks.

“In the doghouse.” Dog houses are those cute little huts that dogs sometimes live in. They often seem to feature as the abode of American cartoon dogs. (We’re thinking Snoopy, Spike from Tom and Jerry, and Pluto.) They’re handy if you’ve got a garden and your dog is happy to spend lots of time outdoors. Even so, dogs like their creature comforts. So, providing them with somewhere to snooze out of the sun or rain is important. Most dogs like to enjoy the company of their human parents, but if they’ve ever been a naughty pup, the ‘doghouse’ is both a real place and a metaphorical place for them to be sent. Ever been in trouble or in someone’s bad books? Chances are you were “in the doghouse” and you never knew it.

And just for the record, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a sick dog. But I’m guessing he’s the one with the sad eyes and the thermometer up his butt.

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