“Cleanliness is next to Godliness!”
I am in a loveless marriage. My deadbeat spouse is a slovenly heathen who provides me no physical intimacy, emotional support, or streaming service subscriptions. My extensive collection of houseplants named after qualities I look for in a partner is my only solace. Upon asking my husband to water Cleanliness, my prized swan orchid, he replies he doesn’t know where she is. I shout this idiom as my frustration finally boils over, as I know he is a slut for that succulent succubus, Godliness.
“Bite the bullet!”
I am directing Rambo 6 and Sylvester Stallone is being very disobedient. During the scene where he cauterizes a self-inflicted katana wound he made to cut out the venom of that viper that bit him in the ass, he refuses to comply with the script direction. He keeps spitting out the lead Rambo is supposed to bite down on to distract him from the pain, no matter how many times I bellow this idiom.
“It takes two to tango!”
I am at a ball. It is fancy beyond belief. My partner is a no-show, baptizing the porcelain throne in his vomit after eating some bad crab puffs. The king demands I perform my world-famous Pistachio-Style Tango, but I can’t without my crabby partner, who as usual isn’t here to support me in my time of need. As the king orders me seized, beheaded, and spanked (in that order), I wake up pleading my case by screaming this in desperation.
“A watched pot never boils!”
Too many Flamin’ Hot Cheetos washed down with lukewarm Michelob Ultra has corrupted my husband-who-feels-more-like-a-roommate-now's brain, and he’s become a supervillain. He tied me up on the floor and concocted a deadly nerve agent in my grandmother’s old teapot. The feds are desperately trying to boil it away before it coagulates and begins exuding toxic gases. What they don’t know is that old nana’s teapot has performance anxiety, and can’t heat effectively under pressure. “Fools!” I cry before yelling this idiom, praying they avert their eyes from my dear meemaw’s prized possession.
“Curiosity killed the cat!”
I shouted this after dreaming that the Curiosity Mars rover stabbed Cat Stevens with a scalpel thirty-seven times.
“Let sleeping dogs lie!”
I am a canine public defense lawyer representing the defendant in the trial of the century. My people have been living as second-class citizens for too long, and Alabama’s new “Truth Doctrine” is the last straw. It requires all dogs to always tell the truth regardless of whether they’re fast asleep, dead, or being questioned by the police on suspicion of chewing up the hairbrush. Sweating profusely from the stress and knowing my words will impact the well-being of my brethren for centuries to come, I bark this idiom at the judge (who looks strangely like the ex-lover I secretly wish would murder my husband and steal me away to a small village in Liechtenstein) as the final line of my closing statement.
“Birds of two stones flock to my hand!”
In this one, I got confused and accidentally mixed two idioms together. The dream involved a bird-themed superhero who came to rescue me from drowning in a pile of Michelob Ultra cans, and my teeth fell out during it, but I’ll be damned if I can remember any more detail than that.
“Money isn’t everything!”
The world is in chaos. Buildings, roads, and even marriages crumble as the laws of physics fail to work as they previously had for millennia. All because atoms, those precious building blocks of matter, have been replaced by tiny coins. I am a scientist who has just discovered a sliver of matter made of O.G. atoms when I wake up hollering this idiom in glee.
“No, I will not stop taking peyote before I go to bed, Todd!”
I actually shout this one before I go to sleep every night. Peyote is the only way I can fall asleep now, and dreams are my only escape. I am in a loveless marriage.