During college, my friend Luisa, was having a bad day, many problems: papers due, her dog was sick, her love life tempestuous. My friend Mitchell and I had spent the night at Luisa’s house, and in the morning, she woke up in a bleak mood, completely overwhelmed, weeping as she made the coffee. She wandered off to her room to get ready to go to school, muttering like a Middle Ages martyr, “It’s my bear to cross. It’s my bear to cross.”
It’s awful, I know, but witnessing this spectacle of tragedy put Mitchell and I in a rather riotous mood. We were NOT feeling like Middle Ages martyrs, and so there we sat, watching poor Luisa, serious A-student, fabulous gourmet cook, brilliant woman, stagger around trying to face her day, saying, “It’s my BEAR to CROSS”. Luisa who is a literate articulate woman. Mitchell and I were desperately holding back shrieks of laughter, as we drank our coffee.
Mitchell murmured to me, barely controlling the hysteria, “Uh … bear to cross?”
Luisa was in such a dark mood, however, that we were afraid to point this mistake out to her. We feared she might kill us. Later that evening, when she came home, feeling much better, we all made dinner, we drank some wine, we let off some steam. It was then that Mitchell and I launched into imitations of Luisa’s “mea culpa” performance-art-piece early that morning. Mitchell shuffled by like a lunatic, moaning, “It’s my bear to cross. It’s my bear to cross.”
Poor Luisa! She refused to believe for a while that she had said “bear to cross”, but finally had to accept the fact. She was absolutely helpless with laughter, rolling around on the floor. Begging us to imitate her again. “Do it again! Do it again!”
From that day forward, in my group of friends, none of us EVER says “it’s my cross to bear”. We always say, “It’s my bear to cross.”
Speaking of screwing things up inadvertently, check out the memo sent out to the staff of The New York Times from Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Howell Raines, and Gerald Boyd. Looks like the memo “bares” a second look. It also “bares” a spell-check, for God’s sake.
Oh well. It’s their “bare” to cross.
