Someone told me today that New York City has lots of big server farms. When you first walk into the lobby of these buildings, they look like anyplace else. But then you go up the elevator, and the entire building is filled with rows and rows of compute servers and giant refrigeration units.
Which makes perfect sense, except that when I first heard her say the words “server farm”, my mind jumped to someplace else entirely. I got a sudden fleeting yet vivid image of a place where they grow waiters.
But not just waiters. Busboys, maître d’s, bartenders, barristas, cocktail waitresses and all the rest, neatly lined up in rows upon rows, carefully watered and tended to, gradually ripening until they are ready to be plucked and sent out to serve a waiting city.
I told my friend about this vision. “After all,” I said, “it’s not as though vast numbers of young people are thronging to Manhattan to wait on tables just because they want a career in acting.”
We discussed the importance of proper ripening. After all, you don’t want to send an unripe server out into the world. We’ve all had the experience of getting an unripe server. It isn’t pretty.
I wonder how many other phrases there are like this. If you have no idea what their real meaning is, you can come up with another meaning that is perfectly logical and plausible.
And maybe even accurate, in some alternate universe.
I recall a fellow from Singapore coming to the US for the first time. After a long, exhausting flight, he arrived at the airport and spotted a door prominently labeled “Rest Room”.
He went in, eagerly hoping to find couches and lounge chairs…