Meaning of "My tears are getting into my beer"
The following is an excerpt from Dear Abby.
At the end of this paragraph, I can't get the meaning of
"my tears are getting into my beer."
In my opinion, he's being sarcastic.
Could you explain what this husband is saying here?
Wife Gets No Sympathy for Sad Stories of Her Childhood
DEAR ABBY: My wife of 46 years keeps telling me about her deprived childhood. Everybody else had a color TV; the one she grew up with was a black-and-white. Granny didn't have a dryer; she had to use a clothesline. They didn't have a car, and when they finally got one, it was a used car. Finally, they had a new car, but it was stolen two weeks later.
All the other girls had ballet lessons; all the other girls were in Brownies. When Granny finally signed her up, it was too late. My wife had to get a used Brownie uniform that didn't fit, and they put her in a troop with Girl Scouts much older. She always wanted a swing-set, but never got one.
Is there counseling and group therapy for this self-pity condition? I'm laughing to myself and my tears are getting into my beer.
-- HAD IT ROUGH, TOO
Top answer
Mr. Wife-gets-no-sympathy is not very eloquent, hardly suprising in a Dear-Abby supplicant. He seems to be making a pointless reference to the "tear-in-my-beer" country music songs, the lyrics of which are so maudlin and unsophisticated as to be comical.
- Mr.
- Wife-gets-no-sympathy is not very eloquent, hardly suprising in a Dear-Abby supplicant.
- He seems to be making a pointless reference to the "tear-in-my-beer" country music songs, the lyrics of which are so maudlin and unsophisticated as to be comical.
- The idea is that the singer is crying while getting drunk, ironic because it's his drinking that made him lose his dog, his pickup truck and his wife.
- The expression probably stems from Hank Williams's 1988 "There's a Tear in My Beer", among whose lyrics are "Into these last nine beers I have shed a million tears.
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Mr. Wife-gets-no-sympathy is not very eloquent, hardly suprising in a Dear-Abby supplicant. He seems to be making a pointless reference to the "tear-in-my-beer" country music songs, the lyrics of which are so maudlin and unsophisticated as to be comical. The idea is that the singer is crying while getting drunk, ironic because it's his drinking that made him lose his dog, his pickup truck and
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