“What happened to your car? Where did you get the big dent?”
“It happened last night. I slowed down near an intersection, and an auto-rickshaw driver who had been sitting on my tail, hit me.”
“A driver was sitting on your tail? I didn’t know you had one.”
“Very funny! When someone sits on your tail, he follows you very closely. He doesn’t maintain the required distance between his vehicle and yours.”
“But that’s the way people drive in India. When we drive, we always sit on someone’s tail!”
“That’s true! We usually sit on someone’s tail because we want to pass or overtake him.”
“I get terribly irritated when someone sits on my tail and keeps honking.”
“A lot of people find it irritating. But honking is something that what we all do!”
“I know! I do it too, sometimes. Tell me, how is your company’s new product doing?”
“It’s too early to tell. Our CEO is very bullish about the success of the product.”
“Very bullish? A bull is known for its stubbornness. So, does ...”
“It doesn’t mean stubborn, but optimistic. When you say that someone is bullish, it means that the individual is very confident about something. Sometimes, even aggressively so.”
“Ravi Shastri was bullish about India's chances of defeating Australia in the World Cup.”
“He wasn’t the only one. I think the entire country was in a bullish mood after we had won six games in a row. Or was it seven?”
“Nobody cares about that now. Understand you’ve started taking the bus.”
“It’s the company bus. I leave for office twenty minutes earlier than usual. But the good thing is, I get my forty winks on the bus.”
“Forty winks? You wink at the people on the bus?”
“Of course, not! Do you think I’m nuts? The expression ‘forty winks’ is used in informal contexts to refer to a very short nap that one takes during the daytime.”
“My grandmother usually has forty winks after her morning walk.”
“That’s a good example. The thing about forty winks is that you don’t have to actually lie down on the bed. You can have your forty winks while sitting.”
“Like my grandmother! She has forty winks while sitting in the rocking chair.”
“I read somewhere that Napoleon used to have forty winks while riding a horse.”
“That must have been very difficult to do. Anyway, what are your plans for the evening?”
“Nothing much, actually. I thought of cleaning my motorcycle. Then, I ...”
“How boring! Surely, there are more exciting things to do.”
“You know me. I don’t like to go anywhere on weekdays. Why don’t ...”
“A movie! Let’s go for a movie, can we?”
“It’s not ‘can we’ but ‘shall we’?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The usual question tag for statements beginning with ‘let’s’ is ‘shall we’. Let’s go for a movie, shall we? And the standard reply is either ‘Yes, let’s’ or ‘No, let’s not’.”
“I see. How about this example? Let’s take part in next month’s marathon, shall we?”
“No, let’s not! Let’s sit at home and watch the marathon on TV.”
“You’re such a bore!”
******
“Just taught my kids about taxes by eating 38 % of their ice cream.” — Conan O’Brien
Courtesy:the hindu
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