in the first place

“But why do I have to be the one who rewrites the future? We were only trying to get your dashiki back. That’s the only reason we’re here in the first place!”

No one believed a word the twins said, so they felt no obligation to tell the truth, and they were always being punished, so there was no need to behave themselves in the first place.

This, of course, was the reason she had kept the cannibal book in the first place.

The child was doubly mistaken, for in the first place she meant matador, and in the second place there was no matador, just a bright red steam locomotive.

Michael suspected that the reason Gibby had offered to babysit in the first place was that her father was the reason Michael’s mom lost her job.