Adam Learns how to lose (Idioms about Food)
Adam always found it amazing that no matter what sport you played in, there were
a lot of expressions that used food. When he first started playing sports,
he was always getting confused when people used these expressions and one time
he had gotten into real
trouble with a new
coach who thought that Adam was
lipping him off. The expression that was used the most and always got
a giggle out of everyone was
cut the cheese.

People were always saying, "Eeeww who
cut the cheese. "
Sometimes a team would have a star player and would put
all
their eggs in one basket, trusting that this player would win the game for
the whole team. It was always a
bitter pill
if that player was away, because the whole team would then find themselves
in a jam.
They would often say at the beginning of a game when their star player was
missing, "We're
dead
meat!

or our
goose is cooked. "
Sometimes the games would go extremely well and winning became
a piece of cake.

Often after winning a game the coach or their parents would take them out for a
hamburger or pizza. Man, that was
icing on the cake!
It was always hard to lose a game and afterwards they would often feel
down and that was when they tried to cheer themselves and would say to each
other, "
Don't cry over spilt milk
it's only a game! " Adam still didn't like it when someone on another team
would say,

"We're going to
eat you for breakfast! "
Adam felt that you should just play an honest game and not try to
knock the other team.
This was a difficult lesson for Adam, because it seemed that many sports players
liked to use put downs. Adam found that learning how to lose was the
hardest part of any sport. Even the best teams and the best players would
lose or have a bad game. The secret was to learn to be a good sport about
it and to continue to do your best. Sometimes good or bad luck could
change a game very quickly and sometimes a team would all be playing extremely
well or extremely poorly and that was all it took for one team to win and
another team to lose. Adam understood all of this but he was only a kid,
and when he lost it felt that he had been hit in the
breadbasket. Besides
playing sports, Adam played the clarinet. After losing a game he would try
to get together with friends and just
jam.
Music always made him happy! After all, playing games was supposed to be
for the fun of it. Adam struggled all the time with having fun no matter
how the games turned out and not
crying over spilt milk.
Idioms in the Story:
lipping him off
all
their eggs in one basket
cut the cheese
bitter pill
dead
meat
goose is cooked
icing on the cake
a piece of cake Don't cry over spilt milk
eat you for breakfast
in a jam
down
knock
breadbasket