Have you ever wondered where good ideas come from?  Sometimes, they seem to come out of nowhere, like a virus.  Then you learn that someone else had the same good idea.  Are ideas airborne?

At a weekly English conversation group for women, I brought my box of idiom cards.  What to do with them? Well, you can read the idiom, read the explanation, and then use the idiom in a sentence.  However, this structure seemed a little boring to me.  So out of thin air it seems, I had an idea.  “Let’s read the idiom and then without reading what it means or where it came from, let’s all write about three sentences to explain the idiom.”  Enter humor! The stories were entertaining and we voted for the story we liked best, whether it reflected the meaning of the idiom or not.  For example, take the idiom, “spick and span.”

“Once upon the time, there was a fireworks display that was amazing.    There were all sorts of bursts of light at unexpected moments accompanied by loud booming noises.  The colors were, ‘spicktacular,’ as the span of fireworks spread across the horizon.  Truly, the display was, ‘spick and span.'”

I think you have the idea. And my idea, to make up stories for idioms? I later realized that the game, Balderdash, asks contestants to make up meanings for unusual or seldom recognized words. So no, my game for idioms did not come from thin air. I had a previous experience that came to the forefront of my mind at just the right time.

As to my box of idiom cards, you can find them at: http://www.wordteasers.com.

Enjoy the stories and conversations,

Jane