Thursday, October 9, 2014

It Is Ironic, Is It Not, That the Joke You Are Laughing at Is Really On You

Sometimes, these young whippersnappers get under my skin. I know that's hard to believe, Val Thevictorian being less-than-enamored with those very special Millennials, so different from Val and her ilk at the split-end tail of the Baby Boomer generation.

Today at the teacher lunch table, a very special Millennial mentioned that she had a male student who whipped up his pie filling and said proudly, "Ms. Millennial, I feel like Betty White!" Of course she needled him a bit, informing him that he most likely felt like Betty Crocker, of cookbook fame, not like Betty White, who was an actress on The Golden Girls. The rest of the table got a chuckle out of that, especially the other very special Millennial, who declared that Betty White is one bad old lady, what with being in that Snickers commercial playing football.

So several conversations ebbed and flowed around the table, and in a lull, I told very special Ms. Millennial, "That's kind of ironic, since Betty White played a cooking show star on The Mary Tyler Moore Show." I don't really know what ironic is, remember, but I felt it sounded pretty smart there at the lunch table, with only one Communication Arts teacher among us to correct me.

Well. You would have thought that I'd sprouted another head, like Rosey Grier and Ray Milland in The Thing With Two Heads, the way she looked at me. Let the record show that four other folks around the table smiled and nodded and said, "Hey, that's right." But very special Ms. Millennial was discombobulated. "I don't know that that is." So a Generation X-er explained, "She was more like a Blanche on The Golden Girls."

Seriously. That's what you get for trying to contribute. Two very special Millennials yukking it up that they never even heard of that show. C'mon. It's part of pop culture. Sure it doesn't run on cable and satellite like The Golden Girls. But I daresay their parents or grandparents had surely seen The Mary Tyler Moor Show. How could they deprive these very specials of knowledge of such a treasure? You'd think I had mentioned some black-and-white moldy oldie like Fibber McGee and Molly.

It's days like this that make me pull the shawl tighter around my shoulders, and try to work up speed with my tennis-ball-footed walker so I can accidentally run over some toes.

Oh, well. The joke's on those very special Millennials. Because I will be retiring in 1 and 3/4 years, and they will still be sitting around that teacher lunch table.

7 comments:

  1. She stared in her own show in the 50's.

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  2. You and me both, Val. I was on the phone tonight with a younger friend of mine and he was obviously looking at Facebook or something while trying to carry on a conversation with me. He suddenly said "Oh, no, Jan Hooks died." I had to ask him who that was and he said "Oh, you know, from Saturday Night Live." Well, I have since informed him that I remember Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman and Jane Curtin but Jan Hooks must have come along a generation or so later, after I no longer was watching SNL.

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  3. The Sue Ann Nivens character was one of my favorites. She was a cougar in the 70's...

    Was that a little Alanis Morissette, or was I just desperately reaching?

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  4. I still laugh when Sue Ann Nivens (Betty White) made chocolate eclairs for a Diabetes telethon. When Mary asked how she could do such a thing, Sue Ann said, "Silly Mary, chocolate eclairs have 267 calories. Mine only have 262 because I water down my vanilla."

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  5. joeh,
    Wait a minute! Is that another head I see poking out of your unusually large collar? Never heard of it. But in keeping with the topic of a boy pleased with his school pie...was Betty a cook on that show?

    *****
    Catalyst,
    I must admit that I, too, was shocked when I read that Jan Hooks had died. Not that I'm young or anything. I'm a big Hooks fan. She was Carlene, Charlene's little sister, on Designing Women, a character from Poplar Bluff, Missouri. How could I NOT like her? And yes, she was fantastic on SNL. Some of her best stuff was with Phil Hartman. Now they're both gone.

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    Sioux,
    Good thing Sue Ann was a cougar, not an elephant. She might have accidentally killed Chuckles the Clown when she tried to shuck him.

    Not even a little Alanis Morissette. Let's not forget, Val is not a fan, nor a practitioner, of anything IRONIC.

    *****
    Stephen,
    And she made the Veal Prince Orloff for Mary's dinner party! Where Mr. Grant took three slices, which was HALF!

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  6. Great, now I feel so very old! Nowadays when I watch SNL, I have to ask "Who is that?" when the host does the monolog. Yep, I am old.

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  7. Kathy,
    You ain't a-woofin' or whistlin' Dixie...you're preachin' to the choir.

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