911 to the rescue

[sasha]

A 911 dispatcher gets a call from a man nearly in hysterics. "It's my friend!" the man shrieks. "We were out hunting when he grabbed his chest and collapsed! He isn't breathing! I think he's dead!"

"Alright, sir," the dispatcher says. "Try and stay calm. Let's make sure he's dead before jumping to any conclusions."

"Okay!" the man says. "Hold on..." There's a pause, then the sound of a rifle shot. Then he comes back on the line. "Okay," he says. "Now what?"

[saw]

hysterical...

[winddance]

ouch, funny but then again not

[sasha]

yeah, it is dark - for me the appeal is from a linguistic POV. Just this morning, for some unknown reason, I flashed on a saying we used to bandy about in high school: "Your ass is grass!", meaning "Oh, you're in trouble now!". Why grass? I can understand "your ass" - a much abused body part often kicked, whipped, or beaten - but grass? Maybe it's related somehow to Cockney rhyming slang, via some weird parallel evolution... I dunno.

How many linguists does it take to change a light bulb?

Just one, but only after finding verifiable citations of similar changes in the past

[winddance]

like the cockey rhyming theory, bees and honey (money) but it's shortened from "your ass is grass and I'm the lawnmower" which makes more sense as a threat.

[sasha]

I don't remember ever explicitly hearing the 2nd half, though it was sometimes humorously implied. I seem to recall it more in the sense of "Boy, I'm glad I'm not in your shoes!!"