Day 4: Idioms

Topic: When studying a foreign language, one of the most perplexing, yet amusing forms of speech to master is the idiom. It's one of those things where the literal interpretation usually ends up to be hilarious, offensive, or outright jibberish.
Choose an American idiom and use its literal meaning as the basis for a story.


Sitting high above the factory floor in His big high-end office, He looks out the floor to ceiling windows that cover an entire wall of his office. Down he looks at the hundreds of workers, slaving away to make quota. Stitch by stitch, snip by snip, and fluff by fluff, we sweat. All the while, He sits in his air conditioned office, chatting to God knows who. For all I know, it may be God himself.

Hamied, angel of miracles, is His right hand angel. Second in command. Or third, depending on how you want to look at it. Either way, I guess He realizes it's going to take a miracle to get all these clouds made in time for the upcoming storm. Hamied wanders around the factory floor making sure everything is going as scheduled. 'Helping out' where needed.

"Hamied... to my office, please." The speaker in the factory squeaks and cracks with every word. It's just as outdated as the machines we sew on. Covered in rust and falling apart. You would think, being in Heaven, that everything would be new, pristine, beautiful and white. Well it is. Everywhere but this room. His office is all of those things. Top of the line everything. But once you cross those windows, that stops.

Hamied hurries up the stairs to the huge corner office. As Hamied enters, He stands up in His tailored pin stripe suit. Starts flailing his arms around. Uh oh. It looks as though He has finally found out about the gray fabric we've been using for the past few days.

Last week we were running really low on our usual liner fabric. The next shipment wasn't scheduled for another 2 weeks. Uriel, angel of creativity, being a little over shadowed by Hamied, decided to take it upon himself to fix the problem. Taking 'creative liberty', Uriel decides that gray would be more appropriate for storm clouds. So, thats what we've been putting in them. For almost a week now. Do you have any idea how many clouds go out of this place in a day? Much less a week?

"STOP!" blares the speaker. The entire floor, all the machines, all movements halt. The door at the top of the stairs opens. One polished Stacy Adams shoe steps out to the landing. Then the other. He slowly walks down the steps to the factory floor. He never comes down here. I can imagine He's probably not real happy about being down here.

"Whoever it was that decided to change the lining to grey, please find me in my office in 20 minutes. As for the rest of you, take the rest of the day off. BUT... Be prepared to work twice as hard when you get back. We are canceling the storm this friday, but that means doubling up next week."

As I packed up my things, I watch Uriel sulk up the stairs. The door opens. The curtains close. "Sit please." The speaker was left on. I could hear everything. I was the only one left and with the curtains pulled, no one knew I was still here.

"Dude. You've worked here almost as long as me. You know every cloud has a silver lining. I mean, come on, man! This is wack, dude. My Dad is totally going to freak! Check it, man, you gotta help me get all those clouds back. If He finds out... Oh man, I can't even think about it. You totally owe me a brew for this one, bro. Call Hamaliel and Perpetiel. See if they'll join the search party. Oh man... huh huh. We're so dead."