The Cliche

Writers are warned to stay away from cliches, to not use them ever. Cliches are those common and often overused expressions or ideas. "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer," "There's no place like home," "Any friend of yours is a friend of mine." You get the idea. Here's the thing though, sometimes cliches are completely true, as in what happened to me yesterday.

My husband wanted to go to a Freedom Salute Ceremony for the Troop which he was once the Commander of. His friend was the key note speaker and he wanted to be there to support the Soldiers. To give you some background information, my husband is in the military and recently returned from his second deployment, to Iraq. A Freedom Salute Ceremony is essentially a Welcome Home event for Soldiers and their Families. Often, political figures show up to welcome them home and say thanks. So we decided to go, with our children, to this event. The problem...my husband didn't ask exactly were the ceremony was or for directions on how to get there, hence the cliche.

It's been done so many times before- man gets lost, refuses to ask for directions, wife rolls her eyes. We've seen it in comic strips, on television shows, in the movies, joked about it countless times. It's a very profound and common cliche- yet, in my experience- it's totally true, and what makes it even more complicated is the fact that my husband is in the military and believes he is capable of locating anything just by sheer will and the use of a compass (the latter of which he did not have yesterday). So here's my quick tale of our recent cliche.

Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there was a man who refused to ask for directions. He knew just by using the force, he could find his way. He searched high and low. His wife turned to him and said, "please honey, pull over and ask for directions at a gas station. The truth will set you free." He responded, "You can't handle the truth." To which she said, "I'll pay you anything, just name the price." He said, "Show me the money!" Finally, they arrived, fashionably late, and made their entrance. And they lived happily ever after. As they say, the rest is history.