All The Time

I bet you hear the phrase, “all the time”, all the time. It’s such a common phrase, anyone who even halfway knows the English language uses it on a daily basis when describing something they do frequently. But have you ever really thought about how strange it sounds to say?

If you say something like, “I make tacos all the time,” to me, you’re saying that during all the time you have, absolutely all of it, you’re making tacos. When do you sleep? When do you go to the bathroom? Exactly how much does “all the time” really mean? Are you using other people’s time to make tacos as well? How much time even exists, and how are you monopolizing all of it to make tacos? How many tacos have you made? Who shops for all the ingredients?

How did this phrase even originate? It had to have come from someone who actually used the phrase in a literal context. What was he/she doing all the time? Maybe it was someone describing human’s inhalation of oxygen while here on earth? Was it a World of Warcraft player’s response to someone who asked him how often he masturbates? We may never know.

It doesn’t even sound grammatically correct. Whether you say it as “all the time” or “all of the time”, to me it sounds like a quote from the fictional movie character Borat.

“Bang, bang, skeet, skeet, my name ah Borat I like having the sex for all of the time!”

It would make more sense for the phrase to be “during all my available time”, that way you wouldn’t sound like some kind of grammatically incorrect multi-dimensional alien wizard-dragon who holds sole possession of “all of the time.”

I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore, the point I’m trying to get at is that the phrase “all the time”, is extremely strange. All I’m asking is that if you’re going to use the statement, just don’t do it all of the time. Now, does that mean I want you to merely use the phrase “all the time” sparingly? Or, does that mean I want you to not use all of the time in the universe to say “all of the time” repeatedly? Jesus, I confused myself again. Why does this have to happen all the time?