The Elephant in the Room

Why the hell is there an elephant in a room?

Image by catalyststuff on Freepik

Whenever someone says “the elephant in the room”, a bunch of questions pop into my mildly autistic mind:

• Why is there an elephant in a room?
• How big is the room? Can the elephant move around enough?
• Who put the elephant in the room? Or did it just walk in there?
• If it walked into the room, does that mean the building has extra large doorways?
• If not, was the elephant put in the room as a baby and has grown up in the room?
• If not, did the elephant get lowered into the room from above? In which case, does that mean someone removed the roof? And also the ceiling if it was the ground floor of a two-story building?

Of course, it’s not meant to be taken literally. It’s a metaphorical idiom. It means there is a big problem that everyone is aware of but doesn’t want to talk about.

But as an idiom, it’s not well-matched to what it’s aiming to represent. If you walked into a room and saw an elephant, what would your natural reaction be? You’d mostly likely gasp and go “OH! AN ELEPHANT! WHAT’S THAT DOING IN HERE?” You wouldn’t instantly think, I’ve been told to never mention an elephant if I see one, so I will keep quiet.