Back when my children were young, which was not so long ago and yet was a very long time ago, they’d watch a PBS program called Between the Lions which featured a segment called Cliff Hanger that had a little theme song:
Cliff Hanger,
Hanging from a cliff,
and that’s why they call him Cliff Hanger.
Ever since, I’ve been using this song for any three syllable phrase that ends in -er. Like the grocery store Price Cutter:
Price Cutter,
They’re cutting all the prices,
and that’s why they call them Price Cutter
(In the St. Louis area, you might want to substitute Price Chopper for the same effect.)
Or for the tabby I’ve nicknamed “Big Bopper”:
Big Bopper,
The bopper who is big.
That’s why they call him Big Bopper.
(Not to be confused with the recently former kitten I’ve nicknamed “Little Bopper” but who is now as large as “Big Bopper.”)
For some reason, Between the Lions came to my oldest boy’s mind recently, and he talked about a segment or episode of it at the dinner table. I said, “You know, that’s where I got the song from.” And he didn’t remember the Cliff Hanger segments or the theme song. Even though it was only a couple of years ago that he watched them.
Alas, this is why I must post these footnotes to the things I say to my children. Not just to prove that I’m not making everything up out of whole cloth, but also so that I remember in the coming years where these tropes come from.
Then there was this bit from Woody Allen’s Love and Death:
“Of course there was Old Greggor and his son Young Greggor. Oddly enough, Young Greggor’s son was older than Old Greggor. Nobody could figure out how that happened.”