A: Stop whistling that tune. You’re driving me up the wall.

B: Sorry if I bother you. The song continues playing in my mind because I watched the TV show last night.

Note: This idiom means to “irritate and/or annoy someone very much.” The origin of the idiom is unclear. Therefore we have to assume that it has a literal meaning, and take a guess on its origin. If you imagine two people are stuck in a small room together and one won’t shut up, that would drive the other to “climb the walls” in an attempt to get out if he can’t get out by the door or window. Interestingly, in Chinese there is an idiom “狗急跳墙,” which literally means “When a dog is hard-pressed, it will jump up the wall.”