Trust me to open my mouth, now everybody knows Trust me, now I've let
you down
(Squeeze – Trust Me To Open My Mouth Lyrics)
I have found this phrase
"trust me to get haunted by the flakiest ghost in the world",
but I cannot understand its meaning and I googled it and found the song by Squeeze. Do they have the same meaning?
Thank you for help!
Best Answer
It's a somewhat idiomatic usage. Literally, [You can] trust me to [do something stupid, is effectively a rueful admission that it's typical of me to do stupid things (so it's no surprise that I just did it again).
It's not only used when the speaker is calling attention to his own (typical) action, so...
...is an idiomatic colloquial usage meaning You've just done something stupid, which is typical of you.
Also note that the "typical" action needn't always be an obviously bad thing. I can't easily track down a written instance, but...
...could reasonably be said admiringly by a guest if John's party is obviously going really well, and everyone (or at least, the speaker) knows perfectly well that John's parties are always great fun).
I should perhaps point out that in every context I can imagine, the object of the verb (you, John) is always heavily stressed in speech.