Thanks for all the examples, it's been fun.
There are fewer English ones so far, and mine are probably not very typical, but nevertheless ...
As my dad gradually succumbs to dementia, the sayings of his that used to annoy me are now more bittersweet.
[after someone drops something with a loud crash]
'Dropped the set out of your ring!'
(= the setting, the gemstone; ironic because a gem in a ring would be tiny, not a loud noise)
A: 'Well ...'
B: 'It's a deep subject.'
(= pun on the meaning of 'well')
'Have to go see a dog about a boy / go drain the radiator'
(= go to the bathroom)
Sorry, those aren't much to write home about.
Oddly, when I was looking for a T.S. Eliot quote ('These fragments I have shored against my ruins' -- really, not 'ruin'?), the first thing I got at U. Toronto online was this poem by Margaret Atwood:
My mother dwindles and dwindles
and lives and lives ...
http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/my-mothe...I want to urge everyone to record what their oldest relatives say.
But maybe it's already almost too late.