For Saturday, May 19: What kind of collection do you have?

Collect moments not things. Unknown

I spent today (Saturday) sifting through boxes of things with my Grandpa. Things he has saved over the years that when he sees them he is reminded of a moment. He thinks the things are the memory but what I hope he discovered as we went through box after box is that the thing isn't the memory. The moment that brought about the thing is. Our moments become our most prized collection. Things break, get lost, lose their representation, get stolen, etc. But moments. They find a home within us. And even if our memory fails us the moment still lives on in our hearts. My Grandpa has lived a lot of moments in his life, something the things he has collected will never be able to compete with. So collect your moments and let the things pass you by.

Comments

Call it a Day

The literal use of this phrase hails from 1838 when the phrase originally was "call it half a day" to mean leaving work early. (source) The modern use of the phrase is to indicate ending something due to false sense of accomplishment.

More bang for your buck

This phrase was used a lot in 1953 but an earlier citation puts it at 1940 in a Metals and Plastics Publications advertisement. Read about it here . The phrase means you get more for your money.

Butter someone up

There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment.

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