While I was shaving today I was thinking about the idiom that is often used by my grandfathers generation (well he at least always seems to get a kick out of it): “have your ears lowered.”  It’s one of those things that I would hear every so often growing up, usually followed by a half-assed chuckle.  If I recall, there was even an episode of Doug where Mr. Dink kept using the expression and it freaked Doug out (that guy was such a panzy, but I loved him so).

I can’t say that I’ve ever used it.  Partly because I’m too cool to use any idioms that make sense to more than a handful of people.  But also because I don’t get it.  It’s one of the very few things in life that I have smiled at everytime I’ve heard it but never fucking gotten it.  The ears-lowered bells have never rung in my head.  Until today, I never really gave it much thought, or cared.  But being a slow Saturday (I already said I was shaving, that’s how slow it was), I really started to think about it.

Your ears are most visible when you have just had your hair cut, assuming that you get your hair cut relatively short, like a buzz.  If your hair grows outwards like most of mine, then as it gets longer, your ears become less visible and although they never are closer/further from your head from one point in time to the next, they will appear to be shorter when your hair is longer (because they get lost in your mane).  So when you get your haircut your ears appear longer or larger, but not lower.

So then I thought if one were to have long hair, like Pantene Pro-V long flowing locks, and got almost a foot cut off to donate for cancer patients, the distance between the lobe of your ear and the ends of your hair would go from a foot, to about an inch.  So I guess they are “lowered” since they are so much closer to the “bottom” of your hair, but that is such a stretch that the average person isn’t smart enough to arrive at such a conclusion, so that can’t be it.

So since my first two attempts to reconcile this expression with reason failed, I decided to consult my very close and dear friend the World Wide Web (you may refer to him as the Internet/Internets/Intertubes).  A quick google search yielded a bakers dozen of blogs where people had written about getting their haircut and had used the expression (I then wondered if any of them understood what they were saying).  I then found this gem of a page, which is part of a site that documents many American Englihs idioms and their non-idiom equivalent.

If you take a look at that page, you’ll notice that ‘have sex’ is an idiom for ‘have sexual intercourse’.  I guess that’s just in case you weren’t sure and wanted to consult the internet about what had just transpired.  What this wonderful page didn’t have on it, was the history of ‘having your ears lowered’ or how it means getting your hair cut.  I searched for another few minutes (read: 2 hours) and couldn’t find anything.  So I’m thinking it’s a coming of age thing.  Once I know what it means, I’ll officially be an old man who can say “I got my ears lowered” when I want to show-off my new do. (But seriously, tell me how this saying makes sense).

What sayings/expressions/idioms did/do you use without knowing how it means what it’s supposed to mean?  I’m sure there are more that will come to me now that I’m more concious about it.  Probably in the shower.

Tags: Ears Lowered, Haircuts, Idioms, Jason Mraz, Shaving, Shower

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 9th, 2008 at 11:08 pm and is filed under Reflections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.