Last weekend my wife bought this watering can. On arrival home she went to water the plants only to find the can leaked profusely. A watering can that sprays from the bottom is not what’s needed. Rather than kick the can down the road I offered to take it back to the garden centre for my wife. As I said it I realized my unintended pun and wondered about this idiom and it’s origin.
To kick the can down the road is to avoid or delay doing something it is not a problem solution but a delay tactic, a postponement of the problem. I have a colleague who always says it but gets mixed up saying ‘ let’s not kick the road down the can ‘ . The origin of the idiom came out of the Great Depression when kids kicked the can down roads in the absence of a ball. It was a game like hide and seek and if you got caught with the can you were out. The can had to be kicked down the road.
The actual watering can , can be ( pun intended) traced back to 79 AD as a tool to carry water and John Haws patented the Haws Can in America in 1886, Some people said that John possessed that ‘ can do ‘ type of character. Today the Yunnan Mining Company are the biggest tin producers in the world at 300,000 metric ton of the stuff annually. The Ball Corporation meantime are the biggest producers of beverage tin can at around 74% of European and American produce.
When I returned the can I then replaced it with another but common sense made me test the replacement only to find it took a few attempts to get one that didn’t leak. The Garden Centre were truly trying to kick the can down the road. Surprisingly their attitude was not helpful and they were irrigation irritated by my being there. Was it too much to expect a can that watered from the spout and did exactly what it said in the tin , sorry can ? Had Brexit taken its toll on reasonable common sense ?
The wife was happy on my return. I had taken the bull by the horns ( where did that idiom come from ? ) and had not kicked the can down the road. For my Chinese readers here’s the translation. Why postpone telling you this and kick more cans down the belt road. Water is a rare commodity and a precious one at that. In fact let’s invest in water preservation and use, no more leaks and let’s get cans that work rather than waste water. As the notice on my desk says ‘ It CAN be done ‘.
把罐子踢到路上
Bǎ guànzi tī dào lùshàng
qbitblogger 