I'm going waaaay of topic here but only because I've found that you guys and girls are some of the most literate and well read folks that I encounter on a regular basis...

...and I got a beef!

As I learned them, there are two expressions and they seem to be getting mixed up lately and I wanted a few opinions on what went wrong.

Phrase one: Q: Where does an eight hundred pound gorilla sleep? A: Anyhwere he wants to.

Phrase two: "...it's like the elephant in the room...everybody knows it's there but no one will talk about it."

Okay? I always understood that the gorilla slept wherever he wanted to and nobosy would talk about the elephant. How did these get flipped so that nobody was talking about the gorilla and the elephant seems to have disappeared entirely? Those of us in the USA have no doubt seen the TV commercial for a retirement funding company that features an impossibly huge gorilla that represents that saving for retirement that nobody wants to acknowledge is a necessity...if they don't want to acknowledge it, it should be an elephant...right?

This may seem small but it's driving me crazy...someone just announced a new show called "The Eight Hundred Pound Gorilla in the Room", thus perpetuating this misunderstanding.

So think back and tell me: how do you remember these two expressions being phrased? It's like someone I know who used to say, "...step up to the bat", to which I'd say, "No! You mead step UP to the PLATE...you GO TO BAT for someone but you don't STEP UP to the BAT for someone...."

Language....go figger!

Best

AA