Cliché

“Then you’re just re-inventing the wheel,” he said. “I hate that saying,” I interrupted, “it’s so cliché. All you’re saying is that you can’t think of a better way of communicating an idea other than to copy someone else’s simile.” He definitely didn’t expect me to hijack his technical conversation nor the personal attack and so sat back, a little stunned, while he visibly processed what I had said. I pressed, “It’s the same as when people say, ‘think outside the box.’
“Thinking outside the box and re-inventing the wheel are totally different things, Grae.”
His condescension boiled my blood a little. “Maybe he doesn’t know what a simile is,” I thought to myself. I sighed loudly and rolled my eyes. It seemed to take him forever to finish that sentence.
“They mean different things but are both clichés and they are both annoying.” It was then that everyone who had been listening to what I said, including myself, realized my whole point in this digression was to be cruel. But maybe no one actually was listening; we were drunk.
“It gets the point across. What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s totally thoughtless. Why not say it in your own words?”
“Like what? It’s a perfectly encapsulated idea in,” he paused to silently count to three, “three words.”
“Like anything original.”
“You want me to come up with a new way of saying something just for the sake of originality? Then you’re just re-inventing the wheel.”