Metaphorically Speaking

A high schooler approaches the counter with a small clan of buddies one day. They have been in the store for about ten minutes now and have shown no signs of wanting to rent or buy anything. Instead they have been giggling, shoving each other against the movie racks, and generally being annoyances.

“Hey, you're like a nerd right?” he asks. Behind him, his buddies chortle.

Fernando swivels his chair about to face the gathered youngsters. “I consider myself more than just a simile, actually.”

“What...wait, what does that mean?” asks one of the other teens. A third one punches him in the shoulder and they tussle for a few seconds. Fernando watches in silence until they finish up.

Once he has reclaimed what vestiges of attention they possess, he says, “It means I consider myself to have more than just the qualities of the object or a superficial similarity thereto. I consider myself to be said object. Though that does imply that there exists a distinction of some sort, in which an object could have the qualities of an object without actually being such an object.” Fernando ignores the kids and starts talking to himself. “If something is 'like a red cube,' does it necessarily have to be a red cube though?

“Considering that the statement is true, and not something I say just to make a halfassed comparison that really isn't one. The language doesn't require it. But if it's close enough as to make a worthwhile and meaningful metaphor....hmm. Maybe I'm being too literal.

“'Like a thundercloud.' Faces obviously aren't thunderclouds, but there must be some commonality between angry people and cumulonimbus. It will be an abstract commonality, and it could well be wrong because it requires people to agree on what qualities a thundercloud has, and an angry face has. It would be meaningless to somebody who has never seen a thundercloud nor been told or having learned that the idiom is what it is.

“So why have and use idioms at all if they require abstraction and possible untruth? It just leads to muddled communication unless all parties know what the deal is. I suppose that's why proper research papers or essays or whatever are written in the style that they are. No-nonsense and generally unfun but unambiguous in what they need to get across. The other kind is a...a self-congratulatory puzzle. That's why good writing makes warm fuzzies pop! Because the reader has to figure out on some level or another exactly what the writer is conveying, and it's a small personal triumph once that shared knowledge clicks! A treasure chest which is unlocked by the vagaries of words and meanings. Awesome.

“Hmm.” Fernando's thought-train tapers off at this point, and he refocuses his attention on the here and now.

“Oh, well then,” he remarks to nobody in particular, as the teenagers had vacated the premises. Our hero has reasoned out something marvelous, though, and so he is content.