A Christmas Carol
A couple days ago, I was watching "A Christmas Carol" with a friend and happened to remember the very moment I realized that not all of my fellow college students had gotten in on quite the same merits as me.
Exams had just ended for the fall semester of my sophomore year, and a group of friends and I went out for a late-night dinner and drinking session. It being mid-December, we all had Christmas holidays on the mind (some of us may have had Chanukah or Kwanza holidays on the mind, and I'm pretty certain a couple of us had every intention of celebrating the rites of some obscure orgiastic mystery cult. They chose to go out with us rather than attend the Strip Club of Worship of their choice, since this was in the days before Festivus revolutionized the way we thought of aluminum poles.) So we were all full of good -- or at least alcohol-compatible -- food and quickly drinking ourselves into the sort of state where someone singing the line "round yon virgin" cracked us up. Of course, we were all college students, so that phrase probably would have cracked up us even if we were sober. In any event, the conversation on my end of the table (there were a dozen of us, so our conversation was divided into "table ends") turned to Christmas movies and shows. We all agreed that "A Charlie Brown Christmas" was by far the greatest Christmas TV show, but were bitterly divided over which version of "A Christmas Carol" was the best. Now you have to keep in mind that we were a tad into our cups and not entirely clear on the details of the various versions of "A Christmas Carol." The argument tended to degenerate into "the one with the old guy" versus "the one with the even older guy" polarity. Alliances were forged, stockings full of coal were predicted, and a merry old time was had by all, especially the nice middle-aged couple eavesdropping on us from a nearby booth.
Throughout the conversation, a friend of ours, who I will call Y., had kept fairly silent, concentrating ferociously on his thoughts and his beer. Finally, it seemed, he just couldn't contain himself any longer. Taking advantage of a temporary lull in the conversation, he turned to me and said, very earnest, "You know what I hate about that movie?"
"Which?" I asked.
"Christmas Carol."
"The old guy one or the really old guy one? Or heavyset guy one?"
"All of them."
"Okay. So...what?"
"I think naming the bad guy 'Scrooge' sounds really fake."
"Umm..."
"I mean, naming him Scrooge tells you everything about him, since everybody knows being a Scrooge means he's a really nasty sort of person. That's just hitting us over the head with it. It's like naming the kid 'Cripple' or something."
"Ummmmmm...." I sat there, helpless, not knowing whether to immediately yell out for the rest of the table to listen and laugh or whether to do the decent thing and go outside to laugh it off by myself. He looked rather pleased with his analysis -- perhaps because he was an engineering major who'd discovered an insight into literature that he could share with me, a lit major.
I had just decided to go outside and crack up when he added the final touch to his theory. "I mean. who would call their kid a 'Scrooge' anyway? That's like child abuse or something."
That I couldn't let pass. "I think it was his last name. His first name was Ebenezer."
"Ebenezer," Y. repeated. He seemed to find the prospect of parents naming their kid 'Ebenezer' almost as unlikely as naming their kid 'Scrooge' At this point, the fact that the guy had been visited by four ghosts on Christmas Eve seemed to be the most plausible aspect of the story for Y. I suddenly didn't have the heart to ruin our lovely bonding moment -- I rather liked Y., and if getting a hernia suppressing my laughter was the price I had to pay, so be it.
"So...what do you think of Shakespeare naming his character "Romeo"..."
No, I didn't actually ask him that question. And, to this day, I regret it bitterly..
In other news, I've discovered I feel randomly hostile toward a certain clerk at my supermarket. Well, not entirely random --her attitude annoys the hell out of me. But I'm definitely not given to random hostility in real life, so I keep surprising myself when I make a point of glaring in annoyance at her whenever I walk into the store. And she has seemed to be trying to make nice with me the last couple times I've encountered her. But I still feel randomly hostile toward her. C'est la vie.
x-posted
Exams had just ended for the fall semester of my sophomore year, and a group of friends and I went out for a late-night dinner and drinking session. It being mid-December, we all had Christmas holidays on the mind (some of us may have had Chanukah or Kwanza holidays on the mind, and I'm pretty certain a couple of us had every intention of celebrating the rites of some obscure orgiastic mystery cult. They chose to go out with us rather than attend the Strip Club of Worship of their choice, since this was in the days before Festivus revolutionized the way we thought of aluminum poles.) So we were all full of good -- or at least alcohol-compatible -- food and quickly drinking ourselves into the sort of state where someone singing the line "round yon virgin" cracked us up. Of course, we were all college students, so that phrase probably would have cracked up us even if we were sober. In any event, the conversation on my end of the table (there were a dozen of us, so our conversation was divided into "table ends") turned to Christmas movies and shows. We all agreed that "A Charlie Brown Christmas" was by far the greatest Christmas TV show, but were bitterly divided over which version of "A Christmas Carol" was the best. Now you have to keep in mind that we were a tad into our cups and not entirely clear on the details of the various versions of "A Christmas Carol." The argument tended to degenerate into "the one with the old guy" versus "the one with the even older guy" polarity. Alliances were forged, stockings full of coal were predicted, and a merry old time was had by all, especially the nice middle-aged couple eavesdropping on us from a nearby booth.
Throughout the conversation, a friend of ours, who I will call Y., had kept fairly silent, concentrating ferociously on his thoughts and his beer. Finally, it seemed, he just couldn't contain himself any longer. Taking advantage of a temporary lull in the conversation, he turned to me and said, very earnest, "You know what I hate about that movie?"
"Which?" I asked.
"Christmas Carol."
"The old guy one or the really old guy one? Or heavyset guy one?"
"All of them."
"Okay. So...what?"
"I think naming the bad guy 'Scrooge' sounds really fake."
"Umm..."
"I mean, naming him Scrooge tells you everything about him, since everybody knows being a Scrooge means he's a really nasty sort of person. That's just hitting us over the head with it. It's like naming the kid 'Cripple' or something."
"Ummmmmm...." I sat there, helpless, not knowing whether to immediately yell out for the rest of the table to listen and laugh or whether to do the decent thing and go outside to laugh it off by myself. He looked rather pleased with his analysis -- perhaps because he was an engineering major who'd discovered an insight into literature that he could share with me, a lit major.
I had just decided to go outside and crack up when he added the final touch to his theory. "I mean. who would call their kid a 'Scrooge' anyway? That's like child abuse or something."
That I couldn't let pass. "I think it was his last name. His first name was Ebenezer."
"Ebenezer," Y. repeated. He seemed to find the prospect of parents naming their kid 'Ebenezer' almost as unlikely as naming their kid 'Scrooge' At this point, the fact that the guy had been visited by four ghosts on Christmas Eve seemed to be the most plausible aspect of the story for Y. I suddenly didn't have the heart to ruin our lovely bonding moment -- I rather liked Y., and if getting a hernia suppressing my laughter was the price I had to pay, so be it.
"So...what do you think of Shakespeare naming his character "Romeo"..."
No, I didn't actually ask him that question. And, to this day, I regret it bitterly..
In other news, I've discovered I feel randomly hostile toward a certain clerk at my supermarket. Well, not entirely random --her attitude annoys the hell out of me. But I'm definitely not given to random hostility in real life, so I keep surprising myself when I make a point of glaring in annoyance at her whenever I walk into the store. And she has seemed to be trying to make nice with me the last couple times I've encountered her. But I still feel randomly hostile toward her. C'est la vie.
x-posted