Language-specific memetics holes

“Not my circus, not my monkeys” has been banging around my head as a mini-mantra for the last like 2 weeks, but despite it not being my circus or my monkeys, it is my problem.

In Dutch, there’s a nice way to steal the idiom and tweak it to get closer to that idea: Niet mijn circus, wél mijn apen. Wel lets you emphasize a contrast while keeping a nice parallel structure in the phrasing (echt niet!/echt wel! is a fun one to hear siblings yelling at each other).

English doesn’t have a good parallel for that.

• Not my circus, but the monkeys are mine despite that? Doesn’t have the same ring to it.
• Not my circus, still my monkeys is maybe the closest I can think of. Still has kind of some extra baggage with—it feels like it might also be signaling a continuity thing, like “this was my circus, but now I only have the monkeys”, or conveying some affection/comradery with the monkeys (i.e. “despite not owning the circus, these monkeys are still ‘my’ monkeys, in the sense that they’re my kind of people or I feel kinship with them even if you might expect my lack of circus ownership means I don’t”)