"A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle"

[Charles C Doyle]

But at what moment would evolving fish stop being fish?!

--Charlie

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From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Jesse Sheidlower [jester at PANIX.COM]
Sent: Friday, September 03, 2010 9:42 AM
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On Fri, Sep 03, 2010 at 09:37:51AM -0400, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
>
> One thing that has struck me about "a woman without a man is
> like a fish without a bicycle" or the earlier "a man without
> God is like a fish without a bicycle" since I first heard
> them in the 1970s is that they both seem a little flawed as
> parodies. The idea of the second one, for example, is that a
> man doesn't need God. But "a fish without a bicycle" could
> also be interpreted that the fish is not advanced enough to
> appreciate a bicycle, so that the fish is at fault,
> suggesting in the parodic context that there is something
> deficient about the man rather than that God is useless.

I don't have that reading at all.

There is no way a fish, at any stage of advancement, can use a
bicycle, which to me is the whole point of this. Even the
greatest, smartest, most agile fish is still a fish living
underwater, where a bicycle is useless.

Even if you want to hypothesize a fish who develops legs,
walks out of the water, and becomes human, well, then it's no
longer a fish.

Jesse Sheidlower

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