One of The Most Useful Phrases in English: Get Out of My Life

“Go ahead with Your Own Life – Leave Me Alone!
Keep it to Yourself, it’s My Life”
– from “My Life”, singer Billy Joel

“Get Out of My Life” must be one of the most used phrases in the U.S. It is the ode to privacy, and Americans sing it all the time.

It is most useful with tax people, especially when you’re broke. It is also useful with overzealous patrolmen who hide on the median in the freeway, hoping to catch speeders. As you glide by him at just under the legal speed limit, hope that the cop can read your lips and say it to him!

If you ever do business in an American city for a day, a few dozen surveillance cameras will probably record you. That’s a “Get Out of My Life” situation.

Snoopy government officials who want to look at people’s library records are another group who deserve the “Get Out of My Life” response.

There are a few equivalent phrases. “Take a hike.” “Get Lost.” “Mind your Business” was Ben Franklin’s way of saying it. None of these quite capture the richness of that phrase, “Get Out of My Life!”

It works on radical environmentalists who want to govern people according to the energy conservation equation. It works on ex-girlfriends and ex-boyfriends. It works on others who were formerly significant. It works on telemarketers. It works with these nosy “Neighborhood Watch” people who judge a book by its cover every time.

It is to be abundantly used with government officials who want fingerprints, blood samples, hair samples, DNA samples and urine samples. When they start talking about using ankle bracelets or tracking devices to track the general population, there is no phrase that quite sums it up like this: “Get Out of My Life!”