You’ll Shoot Yer Eye Out!!

A couple of weeks ago I posted the following status update on my Facebook page: “Some people look forward to Christmas for the family get-togethers, or the turkey, or the egg nog, or the presents. I’m looking forward to the 24-hour marathon of ‘A Christmas Story.’”

A Christmas Story was released in movie theatres in 1983 to a poor reception. It’s only when it began showing on TVs at Christmas that it really picked up and became the holiday classic it is today. It’s relatively new in the greater scheme of things – It’s a Wonderful Life and White Christmas are decades older – but it’s like it’s always been around.

When I posted that status update, the response I got was immediate and enthusiastic, and it was only in reading some of the responses that it suddenly occurred to me just how important this movie is to me. It not only pervades every inch of Christmas for me, but much of everyday life.

• Every time I see FRAGILE written in large letters on something, I say, “Fra-gee-lay... must be Italian.”
• As a mom, almost every meal consists of me getting the kids’ plates filled up first, then ours, then jumping up to get something more for the kids, then filling drinks, then getting seconds for them, then remembering condiments... and I can’t help but think of that line, “My mom hadn’t had a hot meal in 15 years” from the movie. I laughed at the time, but now I laugh even harder.
• Getting my son to eat can be a negotiation. I’m always saying things like, “Here comes the choo-choo train!” or “Can you count to five with your fork by taking five bites?” and my husband always replies with, “Tell us how the piggies eat, Randy!”
• Whenever my kids are bundled in snowpants and coats and scarves and mittens and hats, my husband says they look like a tick about to pop.
• My brother and I are extremely close, and we’ll be in the middle of a discussion about someone who’s driving us particularly nuts and my brother will raise a fist in the air and yell, “Bumpuses!!”
• In our first apartment, someone in the adjacent building had dogs, and my husband and I always called them the Bumpus hounds.
• I bought one of those hospital lottery tickets one year, you know those ones for $100 and you can win a million bucks or a car or something, but even if you don’t win you know Sick Kids is getting the money? Anyway, I won a boombox... like, with a TAPE deck. This was three years ago. My husband and I, after our fits of laughter subsided, stared at it for a minute and I said, “You know, this is my major award!”
• When bathing the kids, I used to joke to my husband not to get the soap near their mouths, “You don’t want them coming to us when they’re 25 and blind and accuse us of ‘Soap... POISONING!’”
• Whenever my brother and I see one of those store Santas, we always do the evil, “HO... HO... HO!!” voice.
• My daughter loves the 1982 Annie movie, but when I’m looking for the DVD I can’t help but sing in the nasally radio voice from the movie, “Little orphan Annie!”
• I think I use the “You’ll shoot yer eye out” line on a weekly basis.
• Every time I think I have too many cords going into one power bar, I picture that absolute mess of cords in the wall behind the Christmas tree in the movie.
• There have been many, many occasions where a conversation between my husband and I goes something like this: “So I was out and I [insert line about doing something stupid here] and I said oh... fffffffuuuuuuudddgggge.” “Only you didn’t say fudge, did you? You said the queen mother of all swear words, didn’t you?”
• I’ve often wanted to put a bar of soap in my mouth to find out what it tastes like.
• My husband hates meatloaf and won’t let me make it, and so I call it “Meatloaf beetloaf,” just like Randy.
• We’ve walked by houses with weird lights in the window, and one of us will inevitably say it’s like electric sex gleaming in the window.
• I’ve been known to swear like the dad. “Bifflefarklefrakkingeffin...” (Though I’m more often known to swear like that guy in the movie Johnny Dangerously... my husband and I have been using the term “fargin icehole” for about 20 years now...)
• Whenever I see one of those word games where you’re supposed to decode something, I assume there will only be one answer. I waited for years for John Locke to uncover something on the island that promised all the answers, only for it to say, “Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.” I think everyone in my family can do that scene by memory. “Be sure to... be sure to what???... Ovaltine? Son of a bitch.” But the closest Lost ever got to A Christmas Story was when Scut Farkus ended up as Jack’s best man at his wedding. I was thrilled to see him again!

It’s everywhere. This is probably one of my all-time favourite movies. Much of it was filmed right here in Toronto (when you see scenes with the streetcars, that’s us!) The actual house is in Cleveland, and my aunt and uncle went there in the summer and showed me a picture of it just the other day. Now I MUST get to Cleveland and tour the house... they had a picture of them standing next to the electric sex gleaming in the window. I wonder if there was a faint smell of ozone as they lit it up.

How about you? What’s your favourite holiday movie and why?