The Pecan Park Eagle

Send in the clowns. And make one of them a designated hitter.

First of all, let’s go over the central idea behind these weird things known as paraprosdokians.

For those of you who haven’t heard, PARAPROSDOKIANS are defined as: “Figures of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected; frequently used in a humorous situation.”  For example,

“You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice“ is a fairly typical paraprosdokian.

Famed literary figure Dorothy Parker was a member of the Algonquin Club back in 1920s, and this association itself was a hot bed of alcohol inspired intellectual exchange among various members of the Broadway-Manhattan based theater world of creative people back in the 1920s. They met on a regular basis to drink and think their way through lunch and generally show off little glimmers of their individual genius. George S. Kaufman and Robert Benchley, two of the best comedic writers of their day, were also members of the lunch set too.

One day, Benchley looked across the table, out of the blue, and challenged Dorothy Parker to give them an immediate funny one-liner using the word “horticulture.” Before Benchley could sit back and long enjoy his stumping of the daunting Ms. Parker, Dorothy shot back with a phonetic answer to Benchley’s challenge:

“You can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think.”

I would have loved to have been there to have witnessed the table of club members’ responses to that little example of paraprosdokian wit. WOW!

For further illustrations, simply Google the word and watch all the sites come up with their over-lapping, repetitive lists of the same anonymously presented lists of these same usually amusing little expressions.

The thing about paraprosdokians is that they all pack a whiff of fact and/or wisdom about them. I like that kind of combo, the kind of thought that packs the potential for delivering the whole weight of a collegiate course, a serious literature novel, or a valuable life lesson – and all into a one or two short sentence tagline of wit for those who may be ready to receive its deeper message too.

“Don’t jump out of a perfectly good airplane without a parachute” is good advice, but for the rebellious, it may sound like a dare or another rule to break. Our aforementioned paraprosdokian, on the other hand,  doesn’t say you can’t jump out of a plane without a parachute. It just says you can’t do it twice.

Just for fun, I thought I’d mine some of the apparently common domain paraprosdokians from multiple sites that could (and mostly likely will) come into play during the coming major league baseball season between players and umpires, media and the players, and fans and their ball clubs, et cetera. Here are my favorites:

1. The last thing I want to do is hurt you, but it’s still on the list.
2. A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
3. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
4. If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong.
5. I thought I wanted a career; turns out I just wanted pay checks.
6. I didn’t say it was your fault; I said I was blaming you.
7. Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
8. I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.
9. We never really grow up; we only learn how to act in public.
10. You’re never too old to learn something stupid. *