“Avoid clichés like the plague.” I don’t remember when I first heard this writing advice, which you might notice is also a cliché. It goes so far back in my memory, I’m guessing it was from a high school English teacher. I had a couple of really good ones. Either Mrs. Bounds or Mrs. Olsen might have been the ones who impressed me with the saying early on. Both liked originality in the work they read. A different take came when another teacher observed that clichés became commonplace just because they were universal.
An oddity occurred in my recent reading when one of those clichés turned up in books I read back to back with entirely different settings. “Don’t like the weather? Wait five minutes.” One of those settings was Maine; the other was the Midwest. Both were incorporated into very original writing and fit the stories the authors were telling. I think either Mrs. Bounds or Mrs. Olsen would have agreed the line was appropriate for both books.
The different teacher’s take is proven regularly when Mississippi deals with afternoon summer showers. Sunshine and heat escalate until midafternoon when the clouds roll in. A black cloud that looks to be the size of a dinner plate dumps cats-and-dogs rain for about five minutes with the tantalizing tease of a bit of cooler air. The rain’s allotted time up, the sun returns with the bit of moisture turned into a sauna. When a discussion of Mississippi weather comes up, you can bet that somebody will wisely observe, “Don’t like the weather? Wait five minutes.”
Unfortunately, we are presently in a pattern when we wish five minutes would change things. “Wait five minutes” in our current weather only seems to apply to when the thermometer will pass 100.