Proverbial Parachutes

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 1:36 AM, Benjamin Zimmer
<bgzimmer at ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 12:36 AM, George Thompson
> <george.thompson at nyu.edu> wrote:
>>
>> “You pull the ripcord on the parachute you packed,” he said. “Not the
>> parachute you wish you had packed.”
>> NY Times, June 15, 2010, section A, p. 16, col. 5 (continuation of first
>> page story "Efforts to Repel Gulf Spill Are Described as Chaotic")
>
> Very nice snowcloning of the original, which is of course Donald
> Rumsfeld's "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you
> might want or wish to have at a later time," generalized to "You X the
> Y you Z-ed, not the Y you wish you Z-ed."

Sorry, spoke too soon. Rumsfeld himself was snowcloning, since there
are earlier examples of the template, going back to the poker
expression "You play the hand you're dealt, not the one you wish you
had." Google Books has an example from a 1992 congressional hearing
("But we have a saying in poker that you have got to play the hand
that is dealt you, not the one that you wish you had") with some
earlier variations on the "play the hand you're dealt" theme.

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