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Heather Wake

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25 pairs of famous but contradictory idioms that have us more confused than ever

Why do we say "out of sight, out of mind" if absence makes the heart grow fonder?

Photo credit: Canva

Language, like humanity is very contradictory.

While idioms and proverbs have their differences—mainly that proverbs convey a bit of common wisdom, whereas idioms do not have to have that component—both aim to make sense of the world in concise, easy-to-understand ways.

But both can completely fail at this since both tend to contradict themselves. For instance, there seems to be very differing schools of thought when it comes to hurrying versus being patient, as is indicated by these contrasting phrases:

The early bird gets the worm.

Haste makes waste.

All good things come to him who waits.

A stitch in time saves nine.

Look before you leap.

He who hesitates is lost.

Slow and steady wins the race, but time waits for no man.

Like…huh? Clearly the only idiom that’s actually true in this regard is hurry up and wait.

huh, question, confused, unsure, what? Confusion. media2.giphy.com

But there’s more where that came from! Here are some other proverbs, idioms, and clichés that mean the complete opposite.

  1. Absence makes the heart grow fonder / Out of sight, out of mind.
  2. Attack is the best form of defense / He who lives by the sword dies by the sword.
  3. Clothes make the man / You cannot judge a book by its cover.
  4. Do it well or not at all / Done is better than perfect.
  5. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth / Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.
  6. Doubt is the beginning of wisdom / Faith will move mountains.
  7. Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise / Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.
  8. Faint heart never won a fair lady / The meek shall inherit the earth.
  9. Familiarity breeds contempt / Home is where the heart is.
  10. Great minds think alike / Fools seldom differ.
  11. Hold fast to the words of your ancestors / Wise men make proverbs and fools repeat them.
  12. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again / Don’t beat your head against a wall.
  13. It’s better to be safe than sorry / Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
  14. Laugh and the world laughs with you; weep and you weep alone / Misery loves company.
  15. Love makes the world go around / When poverty comes in the door, love flies out the window.
  16. Many hands make light work / Too make cooks spoil the broth.
  17. Money is the root of all evil / Money makes the world go around.
  18. Opposites attract / Birds of a feather flock together.
  19. Save for a rainy day / Tomorrow will take care of itself.
  20. The best things in life are free / There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
  21. The pen is mightier than the sword / Actions speak louder than words.
  22. The squeaky wheel gets the grease / Silence is golden.
  23. Two’s company, three’s a crowd / The more the merrier.
  24. With age comes wisdom / Out of the mouths of babes, come all wise sayings.
  25. You’re never too old to learn / You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

Just goes to show that no matter which direction you decide to go in life, there’s likely a saying to back up your reasoning. Because life isn’t, as they say, one size fits all.

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Parenting

Boomers often forget what it's like having young kids. Millennials call it 'gramnesia.'

"You never had tantrums when you were little!"

@millennialmomtherapist/Instagram, Photo credit: Canva

Millennials, are you victims of "gramnesia"?

If there's one thing we're really good at in 2025, it's giving specific phenomena a catchy, viral name. It’s funny how once a sort of abstract experience gets a name attached to it, it suddenly becomes much easier to understand and relate to. The Internet—and primarily TikTok—has been great for that. Sure, things get out of hand quite easily (like the overuse of “therapy speak”), but there has also been quite a lot of validation and meaningful conversations that have spawned from these overnight buzzwords.

Case and point: “Gramnesia.”

“Gramnesia,” which combines the words “grandparent” and “amnesia,” has been popping up on Reddit discussions for a while now, though the coiner of the term seems unknown. But only recently has it been really gaining traction.

Back in June of 2024, Maryland-based therapist and mom Allie McQuaid, really brought “gramnesia” to the forefront of the conversation when she made an Instagram video all about it.

“I just heard this term called ‘gramnesia’ when grandparents forget what it’s really like having young kids and I can’t stop thinking about how accurate it is,” she said in the clip.

In her caption, McQuaid shared how so many of her clients would get “slammed” by their parents about how different (i.e. “easier”) raising kids was for them whenever they brought their own children around.

These hyperbolic memories are, as McQuaid put it, so “ridiculous” that they've clearly “forgot[ten] what it was really like in those early years of parenthood.”

Some examples of “gramnesia” statements could be:

“You never had tantrums when you were a kid”

“I potty trained you before you were one”

“You were always happy to eat whatever we fed you.”

“You were spanked and turned out fine!”

Clearly, McQuaid’s video struck a chord, because it wasn’t long before people begin chiming in with their own stories of gramnesia:

“My MIL, over the years, loved to act like her children were perfect growing up. I love to tell the stories of her son (my hubby) getting into all kinds of trouble as a kid - oh the shock.”

“*Baby makes any kind of noise* Grandma: "Oh they must be teething!" Me : "Umm she's 4 months old, She isn't teething yet - just has feelings and is you know - A BABY" grandma: ‘well my kids had all their teeth by 4 months’ 😐🤨”

“5 months old and not sleeping through the night? Did you try rice cereal? Baby not walking ? Rice cereal. Baby not in college yet? Have you tried rice cereal?”

“Ugh my dad literally just said this to me last week… ‘I don’t remember you guys having this many tantrums’… 🙄 right after my boys were upset.”


parenting, conflict, kids, parents, gramnesia These moments may be harder to remember. Image via Canva

McQuaid posited some theories as to why gramnesia exists in the first place.

One is that it could simply be the natural tendency to have a cognitive bias which puts past experiences in a more positive light than they actually were, aka having “euphoric recall.” As she told Huffpost, we tend to have a “foggier memory of how things truly were” as we get older, “especially if the experience we had was particularly difficult or even traumatic.”

Plus, the first few years of parenthood are often such a blur anyway. McQuaid herself admitted that ”I even have a hard time remembering the first year of motherhood, and that was only four years ago.”

In addition, McQuaid theorized that gramnesia exists because previous generations “were not given space to express emotions or indicate that they were struggling to adjust to motherhood.” Honestly, a sound hypothesis.

And for the frustrated folks itching to confront their boomer parents about this, McQuaid suggests picking your battles.

“Check your capacity if you have the space or energy to even consider bringing up your frustration with your parents,” she told Huffpost. “You are likely in the throes of parenting right now, and maybe all you can do is smile and nod after hearing for the 100th time how ‘you were never like this.’”

However, if you are determined to bring it up and set the record straight, McQuaid suggests to actually keep it centered around you and how the situation makes you feel, rather than combating their memories. So, instead of saying, “That’s NOT how it happened!” try something like, “When you said that I never did X when I was Y’s age, it makes me question how well I’m doing as a parent.” Probably easier said than done, to be sure.

And while this sore spot might never come to a full resolution for a lot of millennial parents, at least take some solace in knowing that you’re not crazy, nor are you alone.

parenting, parenting life, parents, babies, having children You'll probably forget the stress of these days too. Image via Canva.

This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.

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Gen Xers and Millennials share childhood memories that would 'destroy' today's kids

The '70s, '80s, and '90s were a different time.

Photo credit: Canva

Nobody wants to relive this.

When adults compare themselves to “kids today,” two somewhat opposing views tend to happen at once. There's both rose-colored nostalgia (“the '90s were a simpler time!” “let’s go back to before we had screens!”) and a sense of superiority when it comes to facing challenges (“kids today are soft!” “I had to walk to school uphill in the snow both ways!").

Regarding the latter, perhaps a lot of that can be attributed to a cultural shift that’s more child-centered. This has led to a quantifiable increase in the number of “sheltered” kids, according to a new Harris Poll. Kids who never walked along in a grocery aisle, talked with a neighbor without their parents, walked/biked somewhere (without a chaperone…certainly nothing like the childhood many of us '70s/'80s/'90s kids grew up in.

This sparked a conversation among Gen Xers and Millennials on TikTok when someone asked, “What’s something we survived as kids that would absolutely emotionally destroy today’s kids?” Woo boy, did folks deliver. Dodgeballs flying at their face, handwriting words in cursive for hours on end, waiting weeks to get back terrible pictures…no one today could handle that. And those are just some of the examples. Keep reading for more.

1. "Going all day at school without a water bottle. We might get a small drink of water from the water fountain at recess, that’s it. Take away a younger person’s water bottle today for five minutes, and they act like they’ve been in the desert for three days without a drop of water and will die of dehydration."

Summer Water Spongebob Squarepants GIFfrom Summer Water GIFs

2. "Having to talk to people to get your questions answered. For everything." — meanwhile, I've seen today's kids have full-blown panic attacks simply about having to ask a waiter, "May I please get a cheeseburger?"

3. "No binge mode. If you wanted to watch The X-Files, you had to be in the house every Friday night while everyone partied. For four years."

"If you missed your episode, you might never see it."

3. "Having to encounter everything 'by chance.' Favorite song on the radio, favorite movie on TV… made it so much more rewarding, but we’ll never experience that emotion again. Like running into a friend out in the wild."

4. "Munching on snacks at 1 am watching Faces of Death."

For those unfamiliar, Faces of Death is a 1978 American horror film that shows scenes of gruesome deaths from around the world, both real and re-enacted. Fun, right?

gen x, millennials, gen z, gen alpha, boomers generational humor, tiktok, generational differences This movie earned 45% on Rotten Tomatoes. Amazon.com

5. "Dodgeball. I just played gaga ball with a bunch of Generation Alphas and omg, these kids are not gonna be okay."

What is gaga ball, you ask? A variation that's gentler, faster-paced, and more accessible. It’s Dodgeball Lite, essentially. And honestly, it's a legitimate improvement from the needlessly savage original.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

6. "Having to write everything in cursive from third grade on in pen. Writing by hand the rough draft, then the 2nd rough draft, then the final draft."

Man, lots of thoughts about handwriting, actually…

"Having to write a research paper while properly citing sources in the required format using only books, newspapers or microfiche from the library. And having to find all that by using the Dewey Decimal System. Also, no spell or grammar check to find our mistakes for us."

"Having to write a rough draft, having a classmate mark it up with errors, re-write it for the teacher to review with more mark-ups, and then having to write the final draft in pen, sometimes in cursive lol."

"That bump on the side of your middle finger from handwriting everything."

7. "Being bored. Kids today don’t know what real boredom is."

More specifically…

8. "Driving with your parent with NO FORM of entertainment. Just look out the window."

Even worse…

9. "Being trapped in the car with your smoker parents… with windows up. And of course, zero functioning seat belts."

10. "Babysitting infants and other small children when you yourself were only 12."

11. "Not being able to see the photographs before they get developed when using disposable cameras/rolls of film in the little black tubes."

12. "Dial-up internet and how it disconnected when someone else made a phone call."

Internet Internet Down GIFfrom Internet GIFs

13. "Driving without using GPS."

"Or when MapQuest was a thing and we had to print out directions to follow! I drove cross country with twenty pages of directions hahahaha."

14. "Trying to follow makeup tutorials that were just blocks of text in Cosmo magazine. No visuals. 🤣"

15. "Forgetting your key and having to wait from 3:45 pm until 6:00 pm when your mom finally gets home. No snacks, no water."

16. "Eating whatever is served, regardless of whether you like it or hate it. There was no asking what we wanted to eat for dinner or what sounded good to us. Nasty pot pie with peas? Eat it. Liver and onions that smell like absolute death? Eat it. And you ain't getting down from the table until your plate is clean — and they meant it. It could be all the way until bedtime. You not getting down. Period. My sister fell asleep face-first into her plate once."

17. "Having to find a library book through the card catalog to know its location."

18. "Calling your friend’s house and talking to their parents first when they pick up the phone. Small talk and communication skills in general have taken a huge hit."

19. "Pooping without a phone."

20. "The TV used to cut to nothing at night. literally the TV would just show the flag 'til the next day… Good night, America."

21. "You only got three lives in a video game, and when you died, you had to start from the very beginning!!"

22. "Blowing and smacking Nintendo games to make them work or not glitch."

23. "Having homework from all classes due the next day! 😂"

24. "Having to rewind a cassette tape with a pencil after being unraveled inside the cassette player, hoping it doesn’t twist while rewinding."

- YouTube www.youtube.com

25. “Those metal pedals on our bikes, hitting your shin cause you missed the pedal or riding with no shoes on."

26. "Having to cover all textbooks with paper bags from the local grocery store. The paper bags had outlines on how to cover your textbooks. Hated this for years. It eventually stopped in high school, possibly 11th grade."

27. "Actually going to a potential employer to ask if they’re hiring and for an application."

28. "The loud ticking of the massive analog clock on the wall during a test. The whole room silent. But the ticking of clock as loud as a rock concert. Every second click click click. I can still hear it in my nightmares. You know y’all younginz can’t tell time unless it’s digital."

29. "When I was in elementary school, lunch was still paid for with cash UNLESS you were a poor kid with free lunch. Then, they gave you a bright yellow laminated card and everyone in your class knew you were poor. 😏"

30. "Blackouts. They will NEVER survive blackouts the way we did back then."

31. "Chickenpox!"

32. "Not knowing if The Blair Witch Project was real or not."

Abell46s GIFfrom Abell46s GIFs

33. "Roman candle fights."

Ah yes, pointing fireworks at each other. What could possibly go wrong?

- YouTube www.youtube.com

34. “Climbing and falling off six-foot monkey bars onto plain concrete."

35. "The merry-go-round...pure steel in the summer."

36. "The threat of pulling 20 to life for my LimeWire bootlegs. The media had me feeling like young Capone."

37. "Thinking the world will end when Y2K comes."

38. "Computer crashing while just putting the finishing touches on your school report and you didn’t hit save."

39. "Having to manually change the channel on the TV and if the knob broke looking frantically for pliers!!! Don’t get me started on the aluminum foil on the TV antennas!"

40. "I was home alone in the morning and got myself fed, dressed and walked myself to afternoon Kindergarten."

41. "Non-stop bullying was normal. 😩"

Respeto GIFfrom Bully GIFs


42. "Riding in the back of a pickup truck down the highway."

43. "A dentist that doesn’t numb your gums before jabbing you with a needle."

44. "Having that ONE copy of the video you and your friends made, greatest memories ever, and then your dad tapes over it for a 90-second Tyson fight."

…and lastly…

45. "The Challenger Explosion, and no trauma counseling after. We were expected to just move on to the next class and go about our day."

That said, we can probably all agree that in reality, kids today endure plenty—we didn't exactly have to contend with active shooter drills, cyberbullying, etc.—and are incredibly resilient in their own way. This was more lighthearted than anything else. Or, at the very least, a fun and traumatic romp down memory lane for us olds.

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'Severance' actor dedicates historic Emmy win to his 'tough' first acting coach—his mom

"Do the work, show up, and most importantly, for the love of God, don't embarrass me in public."

via Gabriel Hutchinson Photography/Wikimedia Commons

Short. Sweet. Perfect.

Tramell Tillman, aka Mr. Milchik in Severance, might have made Emmy history for being the first Black man ever to win Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series…but he’s also in the running for best acceptance speech ever. As Tillman took to the stage, he began by quoting: “‘You remember what you want to remember. You make time for what you want to make time for. Do the work, show up, and most importantly, for the love of God, don't embarrass me in public.’”

Then, he cheekily added, “My first acting coach was tough, y'all. But all great mothers are.” That's right, Tillman’s acceptance speech became a heartwarming tribute to his mother, who also happened to be accompanying him that night.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

“Mama, you were there for me when no one else was, and no one else would show up. Your loving kindness stays with me, and this is for you.” Tillman then concluded, “Thank you to the Academy. I am full. I am humbled. I am honored. And as my mama would say, ‘OOOOO Look at God!’” That’s it–short, sweet, personal…about as close to a perfect Emmy speech as you could get.

In a previous interview with amNewYork, Tillman shared that it was his mom who encouraged him to get into acting to overcome his shyness. Because of her, his first acting role came in the form of a one-line part in a Christmas play. And from there "something clicked,” Tillman said.

With that tidbit in mind, it makes all the more sense that Tillman would dedicate his win to the woman who started it all. That wasn’t the only iconic Severance moment at the awards show. Britt Lower, who plays Helly, took home the award for Best Lead Actress in a Drama Series.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

While her acceptance speech was rather normal (celebrating the talents of the other nominees, thanking her Severance cast and crew, etc). But then, as many eagle-eyed fans spotted, the words "LET ME OUT" were written in all caps on the back of the paper Lower read from. This was an awesome Easter egg referring to something her character did in Season One. Iykyk.

@taquedurshop Let me out Helly. Love this scene #fyp #severance #adamscott #letmeout #helena #appletv #severanceedit #musicdanceexperience #severancetvshow #severance #severancetvshow #lumon #lumonindustries #grandcentral #grandcentralstation #forupage #fyp#hellyseverance ♬ original sound - grapo

In addition, the series took home the following additional wins:

  • Outstanding Production Design for a Narrative Contemporary Program (One-Hour or More)
  • Outstanding Title Design
  • Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Comedy or Drama Series (One Hour)
  • Outstanding Music Composition for a Series (Original Dramatic Score)
  • Outstanding Cinematography for a Series (One Hour)
  • Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series: Merritt Wever
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