matthearn.com

Over Thanksgiving, we watched “A Christmas Story,” featuring Peter Billingsley, Scott Farkus, and Bumpus’s Dogs. Great film, which even after watching it all the way through, my wife insists she’s never seen the entirety of. I noted a few strange things (warning: lists within lists a-comin’):

• Miss Shields, Ralphie’s schoolteacher, is kinda sneaky hot. Sure, she’s overweight and dumpy and middle-aged, but she’s got that stern schoolmarm thing going on. That doesn’t turn anyone else on? Just me, huh? Okay, nevermind.
• I don’t know what kind of insanely superpowered BB-gun Ralphie got, but I’ve had lead pellets bounce back at me directly from a wooden target placed roughly 15 feet away, and it was about as painful as getting flogged with a shoelace. Admittedly, lead is soft; BBs are steel (BB does not stand for “Brass Ball,” in case you were wondering). Plus, idiot-boy put his target over a piece of metal, whereas my ammo was bouncing off impact-absorbing plywood. Still. I’m just sayin’, maybe Ralphie could man up a bit and take a round to the face without flying backwards like he’d been hit by a bus. PART OF GROWING UP IS GETTING HIT IN THE FACE BY THE OCCASIONAL PIECE OF FAST-MOVING METAL.
• Did it never occur to the fire department that, instead of yanking or cutting Flick’s tongue off the flagpole, they might simply have poured warm water over it? He showed up back in class looking like they’d freed him with a bandsaw.
• Why don’t men wear hats anymore? I mean, I know the story about JFK giving his inauguration address, or some speech of similar gravitas, without a hat on, and after that hats sorta petered out. But c’mon, dress hats are FANTASTIC. I’d wear one with suits and nice clothes all the time if I could find one that fits my head for a reasonable price. This also got me thinking of a bunch of other things that you never see anymore (and in fact haven’t really seen in my lifetime):
  • Men wearing suits all the time, including to sports events and while gardening. Now you can get a seat in a Michelin 3-star restaurant wearing cutoffs and a T-shirt featuring a picture of Calvin pissing on Che Guevara. THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING, people.
  • Drunken department store Santas. Time was, every Santy was soused to the gills and nobody thought anything of it; dealing with that many unruly children basically REQUIRED it. If St. Nick even has a beer at lunch these days he’d probably be stoned to death by a platoon of Soccer/Hockey/Polo moms while their nannies scurried the children over to the Build-A-Bear workshop so their little Christmas hearts don’t get broken by watching Father Christmas die a messy death.
  • Nobody says “soused” anymore, either. And whatever happened to three-martini lunches? And surreptitious bottles of rye in big mahogany executive desks for a little on-the-job tippling? Nobody drinks rye, for that matter, with the possible exception of me and one other (and he knows who he is, the lush).
  • A few things we DON’T need to bring back from the forties/fifties: pointy brassieres (those’ll REALLY put an eye out), polio, Joe McCarthy, and the various wars in Europe and Asia.
• Last thing: if my next-door neighbors had a pack of dogs that broke into my house and ruined my Christmas turkey, the dogs would be dead and the neighbor would be burying them in the backyard while I ate HIS turkey and drank all his rye.