Wet around the gills: conflating idioms

It started with my father, the bastard. He passed it on to me and there's nothing I can do. That's science. Darwin provided us with the perfect excuse. I am not responsible for the way I am. It's all society and ancestry, my bloated arthritic gay great-grandmother and the one-room metal box where I was raised in downtown shitville. Thankfully I'm preaching to a dead horse. We're all evolutionists now.

My father's verbal memory was a tricky bastard. It didn't start that way, at least according to his stories, which I, his only child, heard ad nauseum every day of my youth. When he was in his 20s and 30s, he did those impossible newspaper crosswords every day and blew the competition out of the water. He would refer to Martin Riggs (from Lethal Weapon) as “John Smith” because Mel Gibson played Riggs and also voice acted Smith in “Pocahontas”.

I remember him saying that he was trying to “nail the hammer on the head” and advised me not to “count all my eggs before they hatch”. He would try to “shoot the blue moon” when playing Hearts online. With his mourned that he would “burn that bridge when [he] came to it.” It was all amusing as hell until I noticed that I was cursed with the same problem.

Today I said “wet around the gills,” after which my wife glanced pityingly in my direction, like Professor Higgins to Eliza Dolittle before she gained the insufferable accent. Being sure of the rightness of my poetic instinct, I googled the phrase. 5,590 hits, or rather, only 5,590 hits. Google proceeds to reveal that my brain is conflating two idioms. “Green around the gills” scores 985,000 hits. “Wet around the ears” gets 19.3 million.

That a phrase exists on the Internet is hardly the litmus test for its rightness or coherence. Even “green around the gizzard” may be found on page 146 in an e-book entitled Sundays in August. People will publish any wild herring these days. Judging by research by the International Data Corporation, we should be closing in on 3 zettabytes of global information, and I may not be able to fathom the ridiculous volume of information that entails, but I do know it includes that every moron like myself who posts a comment on Youtube and all those posts may or may not be included in a Google search. (In fact I tried googling a youtube comment I made a few years ago and thank God, nothing showed, which means that not every word ever interneted is forever available.)

I conclude that there are up to 5,589 other mental delinquents out there, and I can still be proud to say that before this article I never published the phrase.

I'm getting off-track. I was trying to discussing conflating idioms. Conflations.com defines this common confusion as “an amalgamation of two different expressions. In most cases, the combination results in a new expression that makes little sense literally, but clearly expresses an idea because it references well-known idioms.” The introductory articles goes on to distinguish between conflations that are still interpreted to mean the same thing (e.g. “look who's calling the kettle black”) from conflations that do not – usually rendered as incoherent as a red goose chase.

But I'm in good company. During the October 7, 2008 Presidential debate, Barack Obama made a similar error. “Now, Senator McCain suggests that somehow... I'm green behind the ears.” The best part is, this could be taken (at least out of context) as the Democratic candidate, still smarting from the birthing controversies, making a Freudian slip and referring to himself as an alien (i.e. little green man).

And now I live in France, which makes it easier, but I live with my wife, who is an educated linguaphile with a perfect memory and an insatiety for pop culture, which makes home a constant stream of embarrassing moments. For years I was able to pride myself on my golden tongue – not so hard when you teach English to Hispanics, French to Americans, and you live with aforementioned dad.

I suppose the dagger's practically in the coffin. Right? Anybody?

What my dog taught me

      Stretch. Sigh. Pant-pant-pant. Lick the chops. Pant-pant-pant. Perk the ears. Head up. Curious. Push up from the hind legs. Trot toward the noise. The clicking of black toe-nails on wood. Sniff. Muzzle to the floor. Investigate the fallen flower of cold broccoli. Tongue out. Take it into the mouth. Doesn't taste right. Drop it. Pant-pant-pant. Raise head and eyes toward master. Inattentive. Want a head pat. Little tail wag. Master turns, lowers hand. Good boy. Turns back to stove. Trot back to bed. Stretch. Lie down. Sigh. Eyes open, watching, resting. Pant-pant-pant.

     To a dog, everything is now. Animals are a world apart from their owners, though their owners often forget. A dog may be anxious, but it cannot worry. A dog may be afraid or excited, but it cannot be pessimistic or optimistic. A dog may be jealous, but it cannot be bitter.

     To a dog, the past and the future, as we conceive them, do not exist. There is no set of distinct events fading toward the horizon. There is only a general sense of “how things are” and “what will happen if I do this.”

     It is without question that dogs have a sense of immediate past and future, in questions like “this happened because I did this” or “I want this to happen so I will do this.” Training animals that cannot apprehend simple causality, like a jellyfish or a bumblebee, is impossible.

     However, as not only a lover but also an observer of animals, I question anyone who says that dogs can remember distinct events that occurred even hours ago, much less months or years. Not only is such information irrelevant for an uncivilized species, the brain is not developed with those abilities. As researcher William Roberts famously observed, animals are “stuck in time” - they cannot travel backward or forward to other places, events or scenarios, historical or hypothetical. They can't remember when they were puppies or that traumatizing event two months ago, and they plan think ahead for the weekend or even envision themselves taking their afternoon walk. Dogs lack the kind of memory called “episodic.” In other words, even though a dog can learn something, it doesn't remember learning it. Similar psychological phenomena occur among humans in the cases of young children and anterograde amnesiacs.
     Try testing your dog yourself for evidence of episodic memory (thanks, Professor Ira Hyman). Put your dog in the backyard for ten minutes, then go and visit it. If your dog is like mine, it will be immediately overjoyed to see you. Now stay in the backyard for ten minutes. Your dog will quickly become bored with you. Leave the dog in the backyard for another ten minutes, then return. Bless its heart -- it is just as excited as the first time! You could repeat this procedure all day with little to no change in the animal's reaction.

     What about a dog predicting when its master will return home? Doesn't this prove that the dog distinctly remembers past events? Not at all. Dogs remember such repetitive events through something akin to a circadian rhythm or an internal clock. Mine gets antsy in the evening because he knows that we go for a walk every day, and he knows by instinct that it usually happens shortly after he starts whining and pacing in my office. The incessant clickety-click breaks me out of gaming, surfing or (occasionally) working reverie.
     On the other hand it is very difficult to find positive evidence of episodic memory without a strong semantic mode of expression. Hyman explains that this kind of memory is tied to an awareness of the self and argues that even chimps may lack the same cognitive abilities.

     Because of their episodic memory, consistency makes or breaks an animal's happiness. While most will enjoy some variety to their day - an exciting change to the walking circuit or a treat with a new flavor - too much will cause anxiety. Dogs' eyes are hardwired to learn an environment. Think of wolves in the wild. To be successful hunters they need to learn the position of every rock, tree and bush in their territory - and these are props that rarely move. Any aberration is perceived as a red flag, warning bells go off - threat or meal? Human beings, having created their own environments for millenia and abandoning the hunter-gather lifestyle for farming and industry, naturally are no longer this sensitive to visual change in their regular venues. But if you move a couch that hasn't been moved in a while, your dog will notice. Your dog won't even know why - but it will be at least a little anxious about this. The owner may be, too - but at least the owner has the power to move it back. The dog just has to deal with it.

     I've had a dog for nearly three years now. We walk or run together every day, usually late at night, one of the last things I do before I go to sleep. We walk alone. There aren't many people that walk when it's dark, and even when we cross paths with someone, we rarely stop to chat.

     This being the case, I've had hours upon hours to observe my dog's behavior and reflect on his psyche. I have to. I leave him off the leash and often signal him - a finger snap or a single word - to do or not do something. I want to give him as much freedom as I can, because he is first and foremost a living thing, and a pet second. And as one living thing to another, he inspires and challenges me and gives me a window to consider another kind of life.

     For the most part, it's a life that seems inordinately desirable. It is simple, present, and generally without worry. I could do without salutation-by-crotch-sniff and bark-in-the-back-yard-all-day, but the exception proves the rule. Dogs have it pretty good.

     I admire my dog for his boundless joy at the little things. Master coming home after a long day. A belly scratch. A quick game of chase. Scraps falling on the floor while master is cooking. A twisting roll on the grass in the sun. Yet another interesting smell.

     I admire my dog for his devotion and dedication. He is fascinated with me and interested by default in anything I happen to be doing. He is upset when I am upset with him and happy when I am happy with him. His existence only makes sense when he is being my dog.

     Doubtless, it's all too easy to idealize a life unplagued the anxieties that come as the price of a complex grasp of the self and the world. Like Adam and Eve, we have given up the world of instinct for the world of right and wrong, which necessitates experiences of shame, deceit, anger and bitterness, at the same time opening up possibilities of generosity, wisdom, courage and love. In short, the sophistication of our brains contains both the birth and death of civility and civilization - our very humanness.

     I don't wish I wasn't human. But my dog teaches me that when I suffer, it's because I choose to suffer. When I experience conflict, it's because I decided to wrestle with an outside force. My dog teaches me that I have the power to choose my battles. Never fighting at all would, I suggest, reduce my humanness to a mere appearance; and that, I cannot do. But what I can do is apprehend my own complicity in the internal, psychological and spiritual pain I experience every day.

     I believe that through pain comes many good things that would otherwise be inaccessible. Through pain I can forge my way to a new understanding of myself. But, akin to the mandates of just war theory, I must apply the laws of proportionality and comparative justice to each case. It is hardly worth entering a war if I cannot prevent more evil than I cause - if the benefits do not exceed the cost. Strangely, through my dog's inability to choose his battles, he has taught me that I can do what he can't.