"May all your dreams come true" really does merit a special place, not because I hate it - I don't - but because it's so freaking hilarious. Please don't bother to tell me it refers to dreams as in goals, hopes* and ambitions; I know that. It's just that it doesn't say that and I, to a degree taking after my mother's literalist bent, can't help snickering every time I encounter that turn of phrase.
May all your dreams come true! Yeah, sure. I really want a housemate to somehow get bacon grease and guacamole on every cubic inch of the kitchen, and I, without a chance to partake of whatever deliciousness they've concocted, have to clean it all up. With a toothbrush.
That's just the tip of the metaphorical iceberg. Horrible bacon-and-guacamole incidents could not only happen in the real world, but do so without disastrous consequence, unless you count me royally chewing someone out for being an inconsiderate, oblivious pain in the butt disastrous which, if I've ever told you off, you might. Regardless of my verbal-flaying skills, however, we're not talking injury, death, psychological trauma (well, maybe,) or extensive property damage.
My girlfriend's dream about a living room full of bottomless pits and profoundly stoned owls, which her mother mysteriously required her to babysit, is another story. Bottomless pits are hazardous, y'all!** And, I know this is tragic, but here's a necessary public announcement: so are owls. Especially stoned owls! I know owls squarely bestride the line between beautiful and cute, but they're still birds of prey, and you know what that means? That means they are incredibly fast-moving, feathery vehicles for lots and lots of sharp pointy objects! And the whole thing about stoners being spacey and complacent just means your dumb butt has a lot better chance of actually grabbing the owl, at which point it will freak right out and lacerate you.
Not safe, folks. Not safe at ALL.
And then there's my mother (the one who raised me, she of Texan notoriety,) who, while coaching my cantankerous seventh-grade self through the trials of Algebra, dreamt herself the y-intercept of a slope-intercept graph. As a refresher, that's the point on the freakin' vertical access, which without proper climbing equipment would be dangerous enough to begin with, but did she just get to sit there? Nope! People kept re-doing her graph's equation, requiring her to keep moving up and down, up and down, up and down...and was there a harness or a rope in sight? Nope! Nobody thinks about y-intercept safety these days.
I could keep going and going, but my point is, "may all your dreams come true" is a really silly phrase, if you're a literalist, and basically, this is why inspirational well-wisher-y things generally leave me snickering helplessly. Heaven help us if Animal from the Muppets takes up dentistry!****
*Rant on this forthcoming at some point.
**My adoptive family lives in Texas. This gives me a monthly supply of y'alls, which obviously I must use wisely for maximum ridiculousness.***
***English really needs a non-hilariously Texan second person plural.
****Thanks for that one, Best Friend. As if going to the dentist wasn't alarming enough already!
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