Name That Quote
by
David Barringer
We play Name That Quote at the kitchen table.
I say, “Boo.”
My daughter screams, “Mulan!”
I say, “There’s a dairy barn across
the road.”
My son says, “101 Dalmatians.
That’s too easy.”
I say, “Parfait!”
Both yell, “Shrek!”
I say, “That’s it, I’m not
going.”
My son says, “Grinch. The real-people
one. Not, not the, the cartoon one.”
I say, “I thought I told you never to come
here.”
My daughter squeals, “Oh, oh, Beauty
Beast,” her shorthand version of the title.
“I wanna do one,” my son says.
“Go ahead,” I say.
“Um.” He’s got stage-fright.
“Let’s go meet Pablo!” He laughs hysterically.
“He lives at the end of Main Street!”
yells my daughter, in cahoots.
“What’s that again?” I ask.
Both of them: “Three Caballeros!”
“Dad,” my son asks, “what does
caballero mean?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Friend.
Partner. Cowboy. I’ll look it up.”
“I want to do another one,” says
my son.
“No, it’s my turn,” argues
my daughter.
I rule for the defendant. Daughter’s turn.
Fair’s fair.She says, “They do this every year.”
My son says, “Ice Age!”
“My turn,” I say.
“Hey!” bawls my son. “It’s
my turn! You said!”
I ignore him and go ahead anyway. I say, “I’m
the leader, I’m the leader.”
My son says, “Aristocats!”
Then: “My turn, my turn.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Um.” Stage-fright, scene two. He
taps his lips. Then he’s got one. He taps his forearm.
“Does this look infected to you?”
“Lilo and Stitch,” I say,
and then to my daughter: “Your turn. Go.”
“What’s infected mean?”
she asks.
“It’s when you have a cut and don’t
keep it clean,” I say, and I should stop here, but I don’t,
“and it gets dirty and infected with bacteria and then
it fills with pus which is this mucous of white blood cells
like in Osmosis Jones and the white blood cells try to kill
the bacteria and it starts to stink and ooze all over the place
and Mommy gets mad because I didn’t make sure we cleaned
your ouchie with antibacterial soap or that spray stuff and
that’s why you use Band-Aids.”
Like a sneaky devil, my son whispers, “Hey,
Pabloooo.”
“He lives at the end of Main Street!”
shouts my daughter.
I ask: “Does Pablo look infected to you?”
They laugh, and in this moment the mood shifts
and the game has opened up. I can tell. I helped manage the
transition. It’s partly my fault.
“Does my butt look infected to you?”
yells my son.
“My butt says this, and my butt says that.
Toodle-dee, doodle-dee, doo!” sings my daughter.
My son laughs so hard he farts.
I say, “Lion King.” But
they don’t get it. This part of the game is over. They’re
on to bigger and bawdier things.
“Ooh, what’s cooking?” my daughter
asks, fanning the air. “Smells like butt perfume.”
My son has lost it. “And he goes poo poo
and pee pee all over the street. It’s Pablo. He’s
walking down the street and—” My son is too excited
to frame his thoughts. It all comes out. All the words. All
the giggles.
“All right, folks,” I say. “Whose
turn is it?”
But I’ve lost them. Or, rather, they’ve
found themselves.
The movies infiltrate their imaginations. The
Disney videos, the Dreamworks DVDs. Stacks of them in plastic
bins in the closet, scattered in towers around the television.
We don’t have cable or satellite TV, but we have over
a hundred videos amassing since my grandfather bought my youngest
brother loads of the things during my parents’ divorce.
Guilt gifts? Distractions from grief? Who knows. When my wife
and I had kids, we inherited all these cartoon movies my youngest
brother no longer wanted. He was on to Citizen Kane and Touch
of Evil, Monty Python and the music of Bob Dylan.
So we got The Rescuers and Fox and Hound,
Lion King and Toy Story.
In high school, I memorized dialogue from Caddyshack
and Fletch, The Holy Grail and The Jerk.
I’d use it anywhere. My friends and I would incorporate
quotes into normal conversation, the thing being not to make
a big deal out of it but to get the recognition, the laugh.
It was call and response.
Oh, Danny!
Love your body, Larry.
I told him we’ve already got one.
The new phone book is here, the new phone
book is here!
We absorbed what we wanted. We memorized dialogue
from entire movies. We searched and retrieved these witty references
when we needed a crutch for our personalities. In certain circumstances,
we used them as comebacks, as put-downs, as self-defense. A
force field of private movie reference known only to those inside.
And if it was unconsciously hostile or unintentionally divisive,
it was still fun. I can’t devalue the joy we found in
it. It was Darwinian or it was psychological or it was just
what teen boys did, how they competed and socialized and stayed
friends for life.
And, now, here I am indoctrinating my kids into
the practice, and they don’t even know how to ride a bike
without training wheels. I didn’t get into movies until
high school. VCRs and cable TV and Atari weren’t around
until I’d already hobbled my adolescent self, or lack
thereof, with the sledgehammer of self-doubt. My kids are in
first and second grades (yeah, I know, I’m late teaching
them to ride without training wheels; so sue me), and they quote
movies faster and more accurately than I can even today.
“No, Dad, that’s not what he says.”
My son. “He says, ‘Take him to the post. No food
or water.’ He doesn’t say ‘three days’
to Little Creek. He only says, ‘No food or water, three
days,’ to Spirit.”
Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.
And he’s right. We jumped to the scene
on the DVD. Bingo. How does he remember dialogue this well?
“Oh, yeah. I can feel it.”
“Emperor’s New Groove!”
“Hellooo, Toast!”
“Jimmy Neutron!”
“A wooden leg named Smith.”
“Mary Poppins!”
More important than my children’s steel-trap
memories, though, and the infiltration of the movies into their
imaginations, is the big bold fact that they take control of
what they remember. They manipulate dialogue. They twist the
story. And they spit it back out as potty talk and fart jokes,
silliness and slapstick, unfunny to anyone but those of us in
the room at the time.
You had to be there. Yes, you did. But you weren’t.
We were. You were at the movies. We were at home. And we made
your mass media into our private joke. And we laughed harder,
we laughed with self-possession, at our private joke. It’s
ours, after all. It isn’t yours.
Isn’t this what family is all about? Boundaries
of information? Circles of insider knowledge? The intimacy of
private jokes? You don’t know us, do you? How could you
until you’ve walked in our socks, nibbled our microwave
popcorn, watched our movies, played our made-up games, heard
our poop jokes?
Except, well, since I went and found out caballero
means “gentleman,” I guess I’m feeling gentlemanly.
And I’m a writer after all. My children and I, we mean
no harm. We’re cultured Americans. We watch movies. A
lot of movies. We’re an American family and we watch movies
at home. We buy them, we watch them, we store them in the closet,
we talk about them, and we watch them again. We make fun of
them. We have fun with them. We leave them behind. Without movies,
where would we get our start?
So close your eyes.
Because it’s a surprise.
Now?
Now.
I give Name That Quote to you.
Do you like it?
(Beauty Beast.)
It’s yours.
....
read father's day by
David Barringer
read medicine by David
Barringer
read Me,
Pedro, & The President
....
David Barringer's third
collection of fiction, We Were Ugly So We Made Beautiful Things,
is now available from Word Riot Press, it includes a beautifugly
introduction by Steve Almond and artwork by Eduardo Recife.
Site: www.davidbarringer.com
