Another Lapse in Judgment

The girls sometimes get books on CD from the library. Like me, they love to read, but sometimes it's fun to listen and let's face it, being read to by the same old voice all the time can get rather dull. Even I think so, and it's my voice.

So last week Sissy was happy to run across a CD version of "A Christmas Story", by Jean Shepherd. You've seen the movie right? It's one of our favorites..... a glimpse of life in the 1940's and a kid who wants a Red Ryder carbine-action BB gun more than anything in the world.
The down-home nostalgia, the lines, oh man, the immortal LINES in that movie.....

You'll shoot your eye out, kid.
Why it's a major award, can't you see?
I triple dog-dare you!
Tell us Ralphie..... what brought you to this LOOOOOWLY state?

I could go on and on but I won't. Anyway, I thought it was great that Sissy had found this audiobook. ..... read by Dick Cavett. "Oh, that's nice," I thought. "He has such a pleasant voice". I even thought I might sit down and listen to some of it with her.

But when we got home, I had other things to tend to and Sissy went straight off to pop in her audiobook. A little while later I walked by the room she was in and something caught my ear.
It was the scene in which Ralphie's Dad goes into the basement to fix the furnace .....

"Aha? AHAA? I-I-I-T'S A CLINKER!"

It's one of the best scenes in the movie so I stopped to listen. In the movie, Ralphie's grownup voice narrates this scene .....

"my old man wove a tapestry of obscenity that as far as we know still hangs in space somewhere over Lake Michigan"

In the MOVIE, throughout the narration of this scene, we hear an angry Ralphie's Dad raging over the furnace, and, thanks to the narration, we have no doubt that he's spewing out obscenities, but the words themselves are really vague and unintelligible.

You get where I'm going with this don't you?

Oh yeah. In the audiobook? Every word uttered by Ralphie's Dad is crystal-clear.

I guess I should be glad I walked by before the scene in which Ralphie says THE word, the BIG one, the queen-mother of all dirty words ..... but right now I'm just wishing I could wash her ears out with soap.