Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Things They Should Invent: food to non-food analogy converter

When I'm trying to describe the size or colour or texture or consistency of something, especially bodily functions and other broadly medical things, I often find myself landing on food analogies. The problem is this grosses some people out. I inadvertently compare my bodily excretion du jour with something that happens to be in their sandwich, and I've ruined their lunch and their entire day.

We need a website for just these occasions. I search for "cherry", it gives me a list of non-food things that are the same size (or colour) as a cherry. I search for "mustard" and it gives me a list of non-food things that are the same colour (or texture or smell) as mustard.

2 comments:

laura k said...

The medical world encourages this, because it's easier for most people to understand "the size of an egg", "the size of a lemon" and "the size of a grapefruit" than it is xx centimeters. (My fibroids were each of those at some point.) It's especially easier for USians, because the medical people are thinking in metric but the patients are thinking in inches.

impudent strumpet said...

Yeah, it's great in medical contexts. The problem is when you're talking to someone else who is far more squeamish than a medical professional, and you say "Yeah, her tumour was the size of a grapefruit," and your interlocutor is eating grapefruit at the time.