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Good Enough

By "Milbarge" and "Fitz-Hume"

I've been wracking my brain for something to write about, betwixt obsessing over my NCAA basketball tournament picks and work stuff like an oral argument and a couple of cert petitions. Failing to come up with anything good, I decided to share an anecdote of one of my little eccentricities.

When I was a kid, I read some mystery book -- it might have been an Encyclopedia Brown, or something similar, because the person trying to solve the mystery was a young boy. I don't remember the plot, but the big clue was that he had to find someone named Huff. He struggled and struggled, and used every pre-Google search method available, but couldn't find this guy anywhere.

Finally, our hero was at the end of his rope and about to give up, and was lamenting his inability to solve the mystery. And then someone said something about his effort being "good enough." And then, all of a sudden, the lightbulb went off: "Good enough -- Hough!" The person's name was pronounced "huff," but was spelled "Hough"! Sure enough, right there in the phone book was the target, Mr. Hough.

Anyway, the point of all this is that even now, years and years later, I still catch myself saying (usually just to myself) "good enough, Hough."

Maybe I should send this to the Onion AV Club to see if they know the name of this book.

Also, above, I used the phrase "all of a sudden." I was emailing with a friend today who used the phrase "all of the sudden." Is this a regional thing? Is there a clear favorite here? I don't feel as strongly about this as I do concerning "in line" versus "on line," but I'm sure I'll stick with the one I've been using.

Full post as published by Begging the Question on March 19, 2008 (boomark / email).