Title says it all… I’m not even sure what it means, exactly. Your salad days are your youth, yes? And the only thing I can come up with is that salad is at the start of the meal. Izzatit?
Salad is green.
The phrase is one of many coined by Bill Shakespeare.
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
ACT: I SCENE: V
CLEOPATRA:
My salad days,
When I was green in judgment: cold in blood,
To say as I said then! But, come, away;
Get me ink and paper:
He shall have every day a several greeting,
Or I’ll unpeople Egypt.
Its entry at the Word Detective says “the important connotation of the phrase is the sense of crisp, fresh youth, tossed with abandon and topped with the tangy vinaigrette of boundless optimism”.
Antony and Cleopatra. Charmian is teasing Cleopatra about her relationship with Caesar; Cleopatra retorts that it was “in my salad days, when I was green in judgment, cold in blood”.
Bill’s worst pun, IMHO. Probably got a few groans out of the audience.
And salad comes at the end of a meal, unless you’re eating in a restaurant (where eating the salad keeping you from noticing how long it takes for the main course to show up) or in California (for which there is no rational explanation).
There’s no rational explanation for the salad coming first in California, or there’s no rational explanation for California itself?
“All green and mixed up…”
It’s also an awesome Minor Threat song, with hints of the prog-core Ian MacKaye would subsequently dabble in with Fugazi.
Yer pal,
Satan
*TIME ELAPSED SINCE I QUIT SMOKING:
Six months, two weeks, two days, 3 hours, 37 minutes and 36 seconds.
7966 cigarettes not smoked, saving $995.75.
Extra time with Drain Bead: 3 weeks, 6 days, 15 hours, 50 minutes.
I slept with a REPUBLICAN moderator!*
Kat asks:
Both.