Another Way A Christmas Story Delights Us with Every Viewing: the Cliches
Another Way A Christmas Story Delights Us with Every Viewing: the Cliches by Roxanne McDonald
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“You’ll shoot your eye out” is number one, but adults do say the darndest things—comments that get passed on to kids who grow up to repeat them, dread turning into their parents because of them, and laugh hysterically whenever hearing them in the context of one of the best Christmas movies of all time. |
One of the reasons we are so drawn to and repeatedly watch A Christmas Story is in the cliches adults speak to their kids and those picked up by kids after years of conditioning comments.
As Dad admires his Oldsmobile, the grown up Ralphy narrates how “the old man always saw himself at the Indianapolis Speedway.” This race track was the one
most often mentioned when we were growing up—whenever an analogy for cars, driving [too fast] and doing things quickly came up.
When Father is bitching about work or war or something at dinnertime, Mother warns, “little pitchers…” The saying went that “Little pitchers have big ears,” whatever that meant.
“You know better” is also, in variation, a most convenient comment for lectures and discipline. Mother uses it on Ralphy just as our parents used it on us.
The fallacious admonishment that “people are starving in China” was often used on finicky eaters, as it is on Randy, who will only eat when his mother tricks him into emulating a pig and showing her how a piggy eats (which was not a strategy for the rest of us).
Another oft-repeated line is the one Mother says to Ralphy after she punishes him is the “Don’t you give me that look” snap.
And of course, “You’ll shoot your eye out” is in there with the “Don’t run with scissors” warnings and threats—one which is so common that Cingular has adopted and adapted it for its 2006 Christmas season commercials, denying kids the bad choices for cellular service by telling them they will “run the bill up.” It kinda works—but not as well as the harping original we have all heard too many times not to laugh now.
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