In my mind I thought...
There phrases that others use that drive me crazy. I am tired of TV weatherfolk forecasting a rumble of thunder. That's not a forecast. Tell me if it's going to rain, or if my house will be struck by lightning. Tornado? Hail? What do you think? Rumbles of thunder don't bother me, nor do they wet the windowsill of a window I forgot to close.
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But this is not about that; instead, it's about a phrase that I say over and over, but that drives me crazy. There are variations.
It may sound like this:
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I thought in my mind I'd have won the lottery by now.
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Sometimes it's slightly different, like...
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In my mind I thought there would be room in my car for the entire polo team.
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And sometimes it's so well-hidden that you almost miss it:
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In my head I thought there would be fewer lions in the jungle—at least that's what I thought.
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See, the problem is—the only place you can think things is your mind. The alternative is to say it aloud—and that's fine, but if you do that, we already know it was in your mind. We don't need to tell people that our thoughts originated in our minds. Some really smart people figured that out years ago...maybe hundreds of years ago. Maybe thousands.
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It's not wrong, or ungrammatical. It's just unnecessary...like complaining you live in close proximity to a landfill. Proximity is just fine by itself. You wouldn't want to be more proximate than proximate unless you're with that special someone special.
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So let's make up our minds not to think in our minds anymore. We'll just think and see how that works out. I may be wrong, but in my mind I think it will work out fine.
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