One (or even woman/genderless/bisexual etc.) imagine the following situation: The 10-year-old Ewald has just been Gertrud into his room. Reprovingly, she stands with a raised index finger in front of the pile of toys that Kevin should have put away 3 days ago. The youngster is now threatened with a telling off my dear swan, for 3 days now I've been telling you to clean up your room! Cetter, curse..." - We don't want to go into details here for the protection of Ewald's self-respect. In any case, he is told by his mother like this properly made a snail! Wait a minute... What does his mother make him? To the snail? How are you supposed to be able to put that back into context now? We have done some research for you:
It should be clear to anyone familiar with Ewald's appearance that the phrase is hardly related to appearances (editor's note: Ewald looks relatively human and houses neither a cottage on the back, still he pulls a Slime trail after itself ;)). No, this colloquial saying refers rather to the Behavior of the small mollusks: So snails are Extremely slow and at least just as careful. At the slightest sign of Danger they retract their antennae or creep away even completely in their protective little house. We humans also display similar behavior when we are harshly criticized and perhaps even loudly yelled at. We suddenly become very meek and would prefer to crawl away - unfortunately, unlike the snail, we do not have a portable housing for such situations.