A friend of mine uttered that line tonight in attempting to tell a quick story about what she had done today. But I had to interrupt her immediately and call her attention to the perfection of that statement. The rest of her story went untold. Mom's out of bourbon was the best sentence of the evening, maybe even of the week. One cannot just rush past that sentence as though it were a run of the mill statement of fact. It's a gem. It demands attention. You can't ignore it. It is a rich vein of humor, waiting for the right smart-aleck to come along and extract the gold.
Just put yourself in a situation where a friend of yours started a story with "Mom's out of bourbon". What would you do? Would you let it slide and patiently listen to the humdrum story to which it's attached? Or would you slam your foot on the brakes and grab the wheel, obnoxously steering the conversation into the deeply rutted path of cheap laughs with such lines as "how many times have I heard myself utter that phrase?" or "Mom's out of bourbon...is it lunchtime again?" or any of a hundred other such sophomoric bon mots? I know what I did.
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