Recently Julie and I were discussing what types of phrases we should stop using because we are too old to use them. This was really sad because I don’t want to change my vocabulary just because I’m old. This also sucks because it is a reminder that I am getting old!!

“When the crap (or other explicative) hits the fan”

This is a really good expression because it really represents the worst thing that can happen. I mean really, it is the worst scenario when poop is involved. My friend over at the Mommy Going Crazy blog really knows that we are talking about here. She dealt with the lesser poop problem. She had it pretty bad but I am quite sure that no fans were involved over there.

So you got some crap, it’s a localized problem. It is a mess to clean up at this point! So imagine you have an industrial strength fan, no of these wimpy ceiling fans, I’m talking high velocity here. So you turn the fan on “high” and throw the crap at the backside of the fan. It hits the fan with a “womp” and now you are experiencing the worst scenario. The small and localized problem you had before is now terrible and most likely hazmat will need to be called in to take care of the problem. It is everywhere and has been smeared into everything.

So Julie and started talking about things phrases we could use to replace this one. So we put on our thinking caps and this is what came out.

“When the crap hits the fan” can be replace with, “when a whole family of dead (poisoned of course) bloated field mice are found under a wood pile in the garage and must be sucked out with a ShopVac fitted with a special bag and filter made specifically for this type of application.” Oh yeah, the sounds associated with this one is, “Thwump.”

So I think we have made and improvement here. I think this is more fitting for the situation where you just can’t say “when the crap hits the fan” such as during a professional lecture, during church, or while speaking for foreign dignitaries.

This has been a public service announcement