I'm Not the Smartest Guy in the Toolshed: And Other Malapropisms - Paperback

by Lane Lowry (Author), Jared Beckstrand (Illustrator), Matthew Ingersoll (Author)

"Hindsight is 50-50." "Fat as molasses." "A calamity of errors," literally.

Every office has one. Every family has one too--the person that mixes up words in common phrases and makes us bite our lips to keep us from laughing out loud and making them feel badly. And you thought Michael Scott from The Office was bad?

A malapropism is defined as, "the mistaken use of a word in place of a similar-sounding one, often with unintentionally amusing effect." It's origin comes from a character in Richard Sheridan's 1775 play The Rivals, Mrs. Malaprop, known for her verbal blunders. The word malapropism derives from this character's name, which Sheridan took from the French term mal a propos meaning "inappropriate."

When it comes to the fabrication and use of malapropisms, we acknowledge that we worked in the presence of
greatness. As certain co-workers spoke, we would wait with great anticipation, pen in hand, for their magical command of the English language to "blossom before our ears."

Simple mistakes like, "I pale in your footsteps," and "wake up and smell the roses" were humorous, but other phrases
created mental images that gave us the laughs we needed to survive the pressures of our daily office environment. This diversion, and the friendship created thereby, drove us to capture these phrases and to "preserve them for posterior."

We have been "raging at the bit" to create this book for many years and its completion is "finally coming down to fruition." Sometimes one must stop "waiting for the procreation of funds" or "mis-underestimating their own potential" and just make things happen. We decided not to "sit on our laurels" any longer (it's very uncomfortable)!

We hope this compilation of Malapropisms, along with Jared Beckstrand's masterful artwork, brings as much laughter to you as it has to us!