turn of phrase

My dad’s usually not the one to crack jokes, make puns, or even attempt to pose the cool when the previous two don’t work. Stereotypically speaking, he’s the one whose many attempts at pulling out a chuckle result in a sad, delayed reaction that is composed of a different kind of laugh (you know, the kind people belch out in order to diffuse the awkward unfunniness of the situation).

But what makes all of that worth the pain is that once in a while, once in a very great while, he would surprise us all as well as himself (because he never plans it. he can’t). The thrill is that when he scores, he really scores. The accuracy in timing and expression is transcendental in the sense that it surpasses the average funny person’s funniest moments. It’s like, “Did you really say that? You?” For a split second he opens up for us a window into a new world in which you find unfamiliar combination of words but still feel an ineffable kinship to the expression. (Of course, he never manages to sustain the energy, somehow having acquired that rare skill of inadvertently extinguishing the fire he ignited. But that’s for another day).

Today, I called my dad, who was in Seoul for the day, asking him to bring me back a pair of my shoes from the studio. I described to him the shoes that looked something like this:

Yes I wear ugly shoes but that’s beside the point. So my dad was grazing through the shoe shelf while on the phone with me. He said that he couldn’t find what I was describing. I said it was tan-brown. He said everything on the shelf was tan-brown. I told him that it’s the one that looks really comfortable (yay for descriptiveness), and that they have shoelaces. Flat, suede, did you find them?

Then came the felicitous turn: “Oh. Noah.”

Uhhm. Huh?

“The ones that look like Noah, right?”

Noah.

This was a whole new level for me. I was struck not because of the seemingly ridiculousness of his comment but the fact that I found myself instantly agreeing with the fact that the shoes were precisely Noahs. And the agreement was immediately followed by a tinge of pleasure towards things coming into unlikely congruence. Strangely, I didn’t even have to ask him what he even MEANT by just saying ‘Noah.’ It just made sense. It was what Richard Rorty would call a metaphor, a new association of words, or between words and things, that pierces a hole in the established system of language and expression. An unfamiliar utterance but that which immediately adheres to the mind with such ease. Yeah. (I’m perfectly aware of how ludicrous I sound at this point, but I proceed).

After I hung up, I couldn’t stop laughing about the fact that he described those moccasin-like whatevers as Noah, and the repeated realization of how right the association was kept me chuckling for another 15 minutes. Kudos.

My dad’s no poet, but really. Noah.