For a recent assignment on my “personal language history” for my History of Language & Linguistics course, our professor asked students to examine the forces most essential to how we speak daily. These may include important events or cultural expectations.
One of my favorite elements of my language history is the vocabulary of movie quotes my dad and I share. Now that we live in different states, this is even more meaningful. It reminds me that we both value the time and space we have shared.
A well-deployed “R-U-N-N-O-F-T” from “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” can make up for so much physical distance between us while also sending us spiraling into fits of laughter. It is often very analytical when we talk now, unlike the routine events you talk about with someone in the same physical space.
Because he lives in Virginia and I attend school in Tennessee, we only talk about once a week. Much of that time is spent sharing about our weeks. He asks me how school is going, and I ask him what’s happening at the church. We both ask how each other’s friends are doing.
We would know these things if we still lived in the same house. Living with someone amounts to knowing about their life.
It is easy to be sad about the physical distance between us when we rehash what once was taken for granted. But I now see that our shared language functions as a bridge.
It reminds us of what we shared in the past and how we overlap now. My dad and I do not always like the same movies, but we share a commonality in a genre I would call “Dumb Guy Action.”
We both love a good “Speed,” “Con-Air,” “Armageddon,” “Ocean’s Eleven” or “Top Gun.” Whatever has the most enormous explosions and dumbest guys, we’re all in. Many quotes from these films have become constant touchpoints in our everyday conversation.
For example, in “Ocean’s Eleven,” there’s a scene where George Clooney’s character asks Brad Pitt’s character, “Should we ask him?” Pitt’s character responds, “Hey, we could ask him.”
This is a pitch-perfect dumb guy line, and we repeat it to each other to no end. Any time anything close to the phrase “Should we ask them” is uttered, you can bet your life on the fact that I will say, “Hey, we could ask ‘em.”
These days, that makes me so happy. Not because I think “Ocean’s Eleven” is the peak of cinema or because I love Brad Pitt just so much, but because it reminds me of my dad and this language that we share. I see this connection working on two levels.
The first is more individual. Whenever one of these quotes comes up in my daily life, whether I say it or just think it, it makes me think of my dad. When I think to say, “Damn, we’re in a tight spot” (another classic “O Brother” line,) I smile and think of how lucky I am to share something so simple and joyful with my dad.
But also, when we physically talk, in person or on the phone, both of us smile when we quote “Airplane!” at each other. (Our favorite is “Jim never has a second cup of coffee after dinner.”)
Talking can be a struggle with physical distance, even when you’re lucky enough to speak to someone who knows and loves you. Having this shared language is important because it comes so easily. It’s an instant connection point, a shared code that communicates what can be difficult to say out loud.
Most importantly, it makes us laugh. The further I get into life, the more I know I will spend increasingly less of it with my dad. That’s just how life progresses.
I tear up every time I think about Bruce Willis staying behind on that silly asteroid because I know it also makes my dad tear up. That fact makes every single dumb-action-guy quote we share all the funnier and all the more precious.