…About Idioms

“Finding a dead dove in the fridge” has got to become an idiom in our society.

As you may know, I was a math teacher trapped – I’m joking, former and future employers, if you happened to stumble upon this little bit of Internet heaven – in an available 6th grade language arts position. While teaching, one of the topics I had to touch on was figurative language, and more specifically, idioms. In between parodying the chorus of Green Day’s “Know Your Enemy” to “Do you know your idiom?” and trying for the umpteenth time to explain to the students that idioms were phrases that didn’t make sense when taken literally, I was able to witness that we have many idioms in our everyday speech.

Hell, there are even plenty I’d never even heard of, but regardless, it was interesting to think that these idioms and cliches probably were actually taken literally at one point. Well, not the raining cats and dogs one, but beating a dead horse, or putting the pedal to the metal. Those make more sense, and they just evolved until they adopted a new meaning.

As you saw in the bold headline, I have already selected my new idiom for adoption: “Finding a dead dove in the fridge.” For the uninitiated, you probably have no clue what I’m referencing, so the following is an explanation of its origination and what it should mean.

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My favorite TV show is easily Arrested Development. The characters were hilarious, the storylines well written, the interactions normal and abnormal at the same time, it was perfect. Even its short shelf life (only 3 seasons) makes it special, simply because of the cult following it received after it was taken off the air. I was one of those people, actually. I remember seeing an episode or two with my brother when it was on FOX, and we enjoyed it, but not enough to make it a must-see show. After it was gone, I started to miss it. Then I watched the entire thing on Hulu in between my freshman and sophomore years of college, and I learned of how awesome the show had been. I requested all three seasons for either a recent birthday or Christmas, and then watched the whole series again, this time with my girlfriend.

Anyway, for the other AD fans out there, this background is overkill, but the uninitiated should get the whole story. Arrested Development could be considered a mock reality show that followed the dysfunctional Bluth family, a wealthy family in the real estate business. The mainest of main characters, Michael, is the son of the CEO of the company, George Sr. Despite their wealthiness, Michael and his son George Michael (you following these names?) live in a model home built by the Bluth Company as a sign of support for the company.

Michael’s brother, G.O.B., (stands for George Oscar Bluth, pronounced like the name “Job”) is a magician that was blackballed by the very Magician’s Alliance he created after a news reporter revealed the secret to a magic box G.O.B used to hide George Sr. in an attempt to avoid having his father arrested. G.O.B.’s continued bungling of his profession is a recurring theme in the show, which if you are quick-witted, you may have realized that this is where the dead dove starts to come into play.

Due to the family’s “creative accounting practices” and George Sr.’s alleged allegiance with Saddam Hussein, the company rapidly loses money and the family starts spending more and more time together at the model home, one of the few possessions they still have. One day, G.O.B. buys a dove at a pet shop for a magic act, and he refuses a cage for the bird as he sticks it into the inside of his suit coat. However, he accidentally walks into the door of the shop, which leads to the bird being killed.

Thus, G.O.B. brings the bird back to the model home and sticks it in the fridge to be returned to the pet shop the next day. Michael later opens the fridge and discovers a brown lunch bag labeled, “DEAD DOVE, Do Not Eat!” which he promptly inspects. Upon discovering that the bag indeed contains a dead dove, he exclaims, “Well, I don’t know what I expected,” as shown in the short clip below.

As you see, my imagining for this “finding a dead dove in the fridge” idiom is that it would represent a situation in which you know what’s going to happen, yet you are still shocked by the outcome anyway. With Michael, G.O.B’s bag warned him that it housed a dead dove, but Michael was still surprised to see the deceased bird in the bag in spite of the forewarning.

Next, I give you a real-life example that actually happened to me.

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About a month and a half ago, my family went to Outback Steakhouse. I normally get an Outback Special steak, but on one of those special menu cards that the waiter had handed us this day, I discovered the combo meal I would have. I could surf ‘n’ turf my steak at a decent price, pairing it with either coconut shrimp or crab cakes. Now, Outback’s coconut shrimp is one of my favorite foods (aided by their delicious Creole marmalade), but I went a different route that day. Instead of taking the safe bet, I went with the crab cakes, as until that point in my life, I had never tried. It’s rare that I feel adventurous when I go out to eat, but I was feeling special.

When my plate was set down before me, I looked down at the crab cakes and they looked delicious. That breading and my imagination of what crab tasted like was very tempting, so after a few bites of my steak, I moved on to the cakes. I took a bite, swallowed, and was instantly disappointed. The taste was exactly and not at all what I expected. My parents questioned my frown and honestly, this was my response:

“It tastes too… fishy. Like, I knew it would be fishy, but…” *sighs*

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For the record, I did finish eating the crab cakes, though I did not enjoy a single bite. Seriously, I have no idea what I thought I was getting with the crab cakes. It’s an animal from the sea, naturally it’s going to taste like another animal that comes from the sea and not like chicken, you fool.

You can easily see the parallels between my situation and Michael’s. In both cases, we knew what we were getting into (the dead dove for him, the fishy flavor of crab for me), and yet we both were thrown a curveball when the very outcome we expected ended up happening (he found the dead dove in the bag, I learned just how fishy crab tasted even though I knew it was fishy).

So folks, spread the word to your friends. If anything, we can get our fellow Arrested Development cult followers to start wielding this newfound phrase. To get started, you can always use my story from Outback, the day I found a dead dove in the fridge.