A couple of days ago, I used the phrase "If you think you're getting back to sleep anytime before morning you've got another thing coming" in a post.

My cousin... (OK, not my cousin, my mother's cousin, which makes her to me... ummmm... my mother's cousin. Yeah, that's it.) emailed to say that she thought it was interesting that I, along with her son, got that phrase wrong and used "thing" instead of "think". It should have been "If you think you're getting back to sleep anytime before morning you've got another think coming."

I admit, I have never heard it that way before. I read the email to the KingofHearts and said, "Did you know it was this?"

"Oh, yeah... it's said both ways."

"Really?"

"Uh huh."

"How weird is it that I've never heard it that way before?"

"Pretty."

He so good for my self esteem.

Since I never take the KoH's word for it when he gives me grammatical advice -- this is the person who was pronouncing the word "akin" with the accent on the first instead of the second syllable when I met him... as if it belonged in the song (Don't go breakin' my heart... It is just akin to wrong. La la la.) -- and since the English professor I used to have in my bag of tricks for just such a question had the nerve to take a job in Pennsylvania and then up and move there to be close to his job without asking my opinion on the matter(!!), I turned to English Language Expert, Professor Google.*

Much like the current Presidential race, opinions were divided.

Although some of the discussion boards (and yes, there are discussion boards where people post and argue and research and assert such things) had strong, and I mean S.T.R.O.N.G, opinions that the "think" version came first and the bastardized "thing" version came later, it was really difficult to figure out the etymology of that phrase and after, oh, five minutes or so, I gave up. Pass me the Ritalin, please.

I think the reason that my generation uses it with "thing", as in something you didn't want/expect will be the thing that will happen instead of the thing that you wanted to happen, is because of the Judas Priest song, You've Got Another Thing Coming. Some of the strong opinions on the message boards blamed Judas Priest for messing up the phrase for everyone.

But the other possible turn of the phrase is with the word "think", as in If that's what you think, you've got another think coming. This one, I find to be much more clever turn of phrase and a bit Seussian in nature.

So I'm curious, Internet. Thing? or Think? Post your opinions below... and although the weight of the world is hanging in the balance, no fighting or I will be forced to enter the comments myself and yell at all you kids to GET OFF MY LAWN!

I'm pretty sure I could create a personality test based on this.

 *Perhaps there are people out there with strong opinions about run-on sentences. Those people should clearly not be reading my blog.