I was talking to our housemate on the phone this afternoon, about his new romantic interest. Shawn has been on a bad woman tear–or perhaps a bad-woman tear–for some time now. Abandoned by the baddest (that is to say, the worst) woman in the Universe, he then went on to date a string of women who, irrespective of whether they were or were not bad in and of themselves, were nonetheless bad for him. This new one seems like a real keeper; we wish her and Shawn the best.

Anyhowitzer, Shawn is naturally very cautious with his heart these days. Nonetheless he confessed to me that he thought he was, to quote him, “cautiously head-over-heels in love.”

That turn of phrase made me laugh. If ever there were a self-contradictory expression, “cautiously head-over-heels in love” would seem to be it. There had to be some more semantically appropriate term, something that helped to convey the same dizzy ecstasy but with a more restrained affect to it.

In five seconds I had it. “Dude,” I told him, “You’re not head-over-heels yet. You’re just neck-over-knees.” 🙂