Shooting at the Eaton Centre: WOW, WOW, WOW!

That’s what Toronto Blue Jays' Brett Lawrie tweeted on Saturday at 6.24 – the first to alert the public to the news. That’s a lot of WOWs, but I guess he didn’t want to let any of the 140 characters go to waste.

Nothing brings out the clichés like a crime claiming innocent victims – INNOCENT VICTIMS being one of them. The witnesses to the crime were also innocent, people just GOING ABOUT THEIR DAILY LIVES when POP, POP, POP, a gun went off (said another witness).  Maybe Lawrie was on to something with his three WOWs. In dangerous situations it’s probably best to repeat words three times as a kind of protective charm. That may be why The Toronto Star repeated “shocking” and derivatives three times. No, wait, I found a fourth. That may undo the protective spell. What were they thinking of at the Star? The BARRAGE OF GUNFIRE probably threw them off, and they miscounted. But it’s always a BARRAGE, so shouldn’t their reporters be used to it by now? And do these crimes ever happen in a deserted mall? No way. It’s always BURSTING WITH LIFE or TEEMING WITH SHOPPERS. And have you noticed, when people flee a crime scene, they never run. They always SPRINT. Police Chief Blair meanwhile HARKENED back to a similar crime six years ago. Shouldn’t HARKEN be confined to Christmas carols?

I am glad to report, however, that Lawrie quickly recovered from his cliché attack and rose to the occasion with a beautiful mixed metaphor: It was, he said, “as if you stepped on an anthill and then everybody flooded right out of the place.”

When I read that, my eyes just went POP, POP, POP, and I thought to myself WOW, WOW, WOW, I couldn’t have said it better.