Idioms are fun

My husband brought this one up last week, and I believe I have related it before:

I once worked in a lighting store. I had the most fun there either finding the needed parts for the electricians who came in every day or helping the stylish consumer find just the right lampshade for a lamp they already owned. As far as lampshades went, it was fun to find just the right size, shape, and proportion to suit the lines of a shapely lamp.

We had shelves devoted to lampshades, and there was one particular shade that had been there for some time. It had a small card attached to it that proclaimed the shade to be "One of a kind." I took a liking to that lampshade and told my husband, "You know that's code don't you? It means, 'This is one ugly lampshade.'"

I bought it. It looked terrific on a lamp we had inherited from my father-in-law's college days.

But the curious thing about that little card was curious only to me. This, too, I explained to Michael later.

"You know what 'one of a kind' actually means? Think about it. Re-imagined literally wouldn't 'one of a kind' mean that the item so marked is merely one of a particular kind? So basically what they are saying is, 'Hey, look: This is a lampshade!'"

Idioms are fun.