Suck it Up

Sometimes you hear one person say to another, "suck it up". This is a curt way of telling someone that their verbal/emotional response is not appropriate for the situation. If a person wants to appear socially superior and clever, they might say, "suck it up, Buttercup!" Rhyming is always clever, right? This expression must be from a movie or something; I've heard it too many times from unrelated people for it to be mere coincidence.

I used to hear similar bullshit in elementary and secondary school:

"Smile, Tom!"

This is something that teachers would utter when I was sad in a situation where I was expected to be happy...usually some group activity or sing-a-long. What the teachers didn't understand--or selectively forgot--was that smiling is a reaction to something; when something pleases me, I smile. Smiling is a reaction, much like reaching out to catch an object when someone unexpectedly tosses one your way while saying, "hey, catch!" A teacher would not expect me to stand there, arms extended, in the absence of something to catch--why would he or she expect me to smile when I'm not pleased?

Anyway, back to suck it up. Suck what up? What are we, vacuum cleaners? I chuckle at the thought of a housewife (or househusband) shouting "suck it up!" at a clogged and dying Hoover; it's absurd and irrational. Don't you think it's hilarious, and also irrational, that we treat one another in a way that we wouldn't treat our household appliances?