One of my favorite cliches is “That’s a great question!”
You might not think of it as a cliche, but people say it all the time and it rarely means what it actually says. Let me explain…
The 3 Meanings of “That’s a Great Question”
#1 – “That’s a Great Question” – On rare occasions, someone will actually ask a great question. If this happens to you, let them know. For Example…
Question: “Now that you’ve won this 12 million dollar powerball lottery, how are you going to stay grounded and keep your life from spinning out of countrol?”
Response: “That’s a great question. Because honestly, I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that. In fact, if you have any good ideas for how to keep me from going nuts with this money, I’ll buy you 3 yachts.”
#2 – “I have no idea what the answer to that question is” – If you’re supposed to know the answer to something, but you have no idea what it is you have two options:
1. admit you’re a dummy. or…
2. pretend like the question was so amazing, that there’s no way you could have known it.
For example…
Question: “Pastor Jim, how many gospels are there in the Bible again?”
Response: “That’s a great question, Timmy. There’s a few of them in the New Testament. And have you ever read Titus before? I bet you haven’t. You might want to check it out.”
#3 – “I do not want to answer that question” – If someone is trying to be polite, instead of telling you they’re not comfortable answering your question, they’ll opt for mock flattery as a way of distracting you from the fact that they’re not going to answer your question. For example…
Question: “So Tyler, have you ever created fake Twitter accounts in order to beat Bryan in your race to 1000 Twitter Followers?”
Response: “That’s a great question. Twitter is a great tool for keeping in touch with different groups of people, and I’ve certainly found it beneficial to have multiple accounts in order to keep my networking systems intact.”
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Has anyone else ever noticed this before, am I the only one? (and no, you can’t respond in the comments by telling me that’s a great question…unless you think it is)
And while we’re here, now’s a great time to follow me on Twitter to hear all the crappy jokes that aren’t good enough or long enough to make it onto the blog. Tyler’s beating me 810-675…I’m running out of time.