Greased Lightning

We have some funny sayings in our culture, and I wonder sometimes about not only origins but also about how they could be envisioned in the real world. Perhaps it’s the result of a project we did back in fifth grade where my teacher (Mrs. Templin – the best teacher I ever had and also my aunt) had us draw some of these sayings. For example, some drew a brick with a beard and little piece of brick next to it to mean, “chip off the old block.” I suppose you could move that forward to nowadays and draw one of J-Lo’s old boyfriends (“Chip off the old block” since she’s just “Jenny from the Block”) but anyway. The one that comes to my mind today is “greased lightning.”

I don’t really know why you want to put grease on lightning, but an educationally responsible kid in Westerville, Ohio decided to take Mrs. Templin’s project to the next level. He didn’t want to just draw a picture of a colloquialism. He wanted to live it out.

According to the news reports, an eighteen year old student at Westerville North High School greased himself with oil to try and elude capture as he ran naked and screaming through the school cafeteria. As if cafeteria lunch wasn’t bad enough, now the other students have to endure the horror of seeing a naked kid covered in greasy oil running around while they try to eat. Unfortunately, for the student this is also the part where he got to be his own visual aid as the officer monitoring the lunch period used his taser not once but twice to stun the student. Greased lightning!

I always thought it was supposed to mean “fast,” but this kid was definitely not living that dream. Once the lightning was inserted into the equation this otherwise slow kid stopped completely. Maybe the lightning interacted with the grease in some strange way and had the opposite effect of what we would expect. One thing is for sure, though, in Ohio “greased lightning” should have a whole new meaning.

For example, if you were trying to tell someone about your drive home from work, you could say that it was like greased lightning: it went okay at first but then I hit a jam and everyone just stopped.

Or you could describe that birthday party for the kid next door that you had to attend. Getting through those two hours was like greased lightning. At first we were all running around the Chuck E. Cheese like lunatics, and then the tokens ran out. I thought my head was going to explode.

Try incorporating it into your daily speech pattern and we’ll see if it will catch on.

By the way, you can read the news report at http://www.nbc5i.com/news/10879220/detail.html?rss=dfw&psp=nationalnews