It’s The Kielbasa Kid…

…bear with me because sometimes my mind starts thinking of some of the weirdest s_ _tuff that could be saved in the useless information file. It happened a couple of days ago when I started to wonder …why is it the whole 9 yards?  I heard someone use it on TV and it’s been something I’ve been hearing for years and often wondered why not 10 yards.  In fact, when I first said it I thought, “Is that right?” The reason I started to question myself after saying it was because you need 10 yards to make a first down in football. So, I looked it up. The phrase predates modern day football which made me wonder then why didn’t football when coming up with the rules of the game didn’t make getting 9 yards the goal in completing a 1st down. Nobody knows for sure where the phrase came from but legend as it the phrase “the whole nine yards” comes from the 1892 satirical works of William Safire. Safire called the term “one of the great etymological mysteries of our time. “This means the phrase dates back to the first time it was written so maybe it was a 6 and not a 9 and the person reading it was dyslexic. As the late Judy Tenuta would say, “it could happen”. So, what were they measuring that made 9 yards complete? Some say a yard was an old nautical term for a wooden rod connected to sailing ships masts to support its sails. Three-mast ships had 3 yards each so the whole 9 yards would mean the sails were fully set. Then I read fabric was measured in yards and 9 yards is where the cut is made. After a while I thought that I could go through “the whole shebang” and “do “whatever it takes” and research “the whole bit” and still might never really go the whole 9 yards in figuring out where the whole 9 yards came from. Although I find it funny to think that maybe it was a 6 and not a 9 and the person reading it was dyslexic which like the late Judy Tenuta would say. “It could happen.”