People say fascinating things.

One person noted that a hamburger was the size of my head. This was in reference to a large hamburger I recently ordered at a local restaurant. It was big but not the size of my head. Maybe a kid’s head or a large dog’s head, but not my head.

Just to be certain I placed my hands to my head in the classic double-handed hamburger method where the hands look like a set of parentheses and the hamburger’s bottom rests on the thumbs and the fingers are locked across the hamburger’s top.

Nope. The hamburger was smaller than my head.

The other day I heard two women conversing and one woman referred to an unruly child “screaming bloody murder.” The other woman had apparently never heard this expression before and wondered what it meant. I guess she thought the child was hurt or in danger or was possibly a homicidal wild thing.

Usually that phrase “screaming bloody murder” means that a person was making the racket one would expect a person to make had they unexpectedly come across a bloody murder and the ensuing uproar such a discovery would cause.

“Screaming bloody murder” as an expression isn’t so much about a crime as it is about saying someone is loud and shrill. It’s kind of like saying a person has a big mouth — perhaps the type of mouth necessary to eat a hamburger that is the size of their head.

The point, if there is a point, is that “screaming bloody murder” is an expression which I’ve heard all my life. It seemed odd to hear one adult explaining its meaning to another adult. But that’s the way of speech. One man’s descriptive phrase is another man’s point of confusion.

Sort of like one man’s poison is another man’s hamburger that is the size of his head.

The hamburger phrase is wonderfully descriptive to denote size. Granted, there are a few things people eat that are truly the size of their heads or larger. Watermelons, for example, are larger than most people’s heads; however, watermelons are also used as a way of saying someone has a big head. A former colleague had a head so big that many folks called him Melon.

To me the hamburger phrase was funny because I imagined a restaurant filled with people eating hamburgers as big as their heads. It would look like everybody had a hamburger for a head — the type of place where McDonald’s Mayor McCheese could truly be elected because everybody would have a hamburger that’s not only as big as their heads but, like McCheese, they would appear to have a hamburger for a head.

But I digress …

What it finally boils down to, is if someone told my old friend Melon that he was eating a hamburger as big as his head, would that mean he’s eating a hamburger the size of a watermelon?

Now that conundrum, my friends, is truly something to scream bloody murder about.



Dean Poling is The Valdosta Daily Times features editor. “Cowboy Boots and Pony Tales,” a book collecting several of his columns, is available at The Valdosta Daily Times.