My kids are super into memes. What’s a meme, you ask? I used to know what it was. Someone would slap bold text on a photo, it would go fairly viral, and boom, that’s a meme. I made one myself a while ago:
It didn’t exactly go viral, but then, if that’s what I was on the internet for, I would have left a long time ago. Anyway, nowadays, my kids define meme much more loosely. They’ll walk around the house saying strings of nonsense over and over. Yesterday my 10-year-old kept saying “You’re killin me, Smalls!” I asked him where he’d heard that. He said “It’s a meme!”
I, on the other hand, will blurt out strings of words that might seem like nonsense, but they are actually movie quotes used intentionally, in a context in which they make sense. Yes, I feel a sense of smug superiority about this. Can you tell?
I often use movie quotes as punchlines to whatever is going on. “I meant to do that” works for everything. Have fun storming the castle,” even if it’s funny only to me, is the number one best thing to say to visitors as they are leaving your house.
One of my favorites is the quote from the title of this post. “Dishes are DONE, man!” from Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead. A movie from the early 90’s, Babysitter stars Christina Applegate as the oldest sister who is left is charge of her siblings when her parents are gone for a long time and the babysitter, well, dies. She pretends she’s older and gets an office job, and asks her stoner brother to wash the dishes. This is how he does it:
And so, for my entire life since I saw that movie, when I feel a sense of accomplishment about a task completed large or small, I will indeed cry out “Dishes are DONE, Man!”
And what do you know? It’s a meme:
Are you blogging again? I’m blogging again.
Is that quote from Home Alone?
Which one? About blogging? That’s funny!