Cool As a Cucumber . . .

I have to admit, sometimes a saying (like this one) captures its meaning so well.  Cool as a cucumber to me means at least a chapter on summer days and nights and all their green growing things, windy days with cool breezes and moving cucumber vines that grow long and tall, each tendril stretching as far as possible for a hold on life, and the cucumber itself, so long, contained and rubber skinned. . .

Which is why, when I looked up the origin for “cool as a cucumber” I laughed so hard!!

John Gray, who wrote many funny poems and plays, including the famous Beggar’s Opera, seems to have coined it in this little ditty:

My passion is as mustard strong;
I sit all sober sad;
Drunk as a piper all day long,
Or like a March-hare mad.

Round as a hoop the bumpers flow;
I drink, yet can’t forget her;
For though as drunk as David’s sow
I love her still the better.

Pert as a pear-monger I’d be,
If Molly were but kind;
Cool as a cucumber could see
The rest of womankind.

Like a stuck pig I gaping stare,
And eye her o’er and o’er;
Lean as a rake, with sighs and care,
Sleek as a mouse before.

(Of course, since it is John Gray, it goes on forever, but I think you get the point!  And feel free to look up the rest of the poem for a good laugh!)