The ditto debate (part 2)

The ditto debate (part 1)

I'm so disappointed. Everyone guessed Rush Limbaugh, which is so far from what I was looking for it's not even funny. Did I forget to say I'm not politically minded? I don't keep up on current events?

Right.

So I guess I should have mentioned ditto was supposed to be a movie reference.

At any rate, my husband and I got in a nice, healthy debate about the word ditto the other day. I have a feeling this whole post is going to be a big fat letdown after everyone got all geared up for a post about Rush. Good ol' Rush Limbaugh, who I don't even like or know anything about, and probably couldn't pick out of a line up of four other balding, middle-aged, pot-bellied, Caucasian Republicans.

If you were looking for a riveting, post about politics, well . . . sorry about your luck that you blundered upon my silly little blog about grammar and my pets and anthropomorphism.

The debate my husband and I had was regarding the late Patrick Swayze. I've been busy and didn't write this post right when it happened, so I would like to point out for the record that when this debate occurred, Patrick Swayze had not yet passed away. Also, regarding his passing, although I have nothing original to say about him, I do think there is a ring of truth to what is becoming his cliche epitaph: he was a courageous soul that fought a terrible fight for a really long time, and he didn't deserve it at all. What an unfair, tragic, shame.

Okay, now that the business has been attended to, back to the debate with Dan, which is of course the main point of this post.

We were IM'ing, he from his BlackBerry, me from my PinkBerry. It was about 5:00 on a workday and we were both about to leave our respective offices, so I IM'd the message "Be careful." His response, "Ditto."

Naturally I responded, "I love you too, Patrick Swayze from Ghost."

His text message reply to me is what started the debate. I couldn't believe when he IM'ed back to me just one word:

"Huh?"

"Huh?"!? What do you mean, "Huh?"!

How could it be that a fellow Child of the 80's would not be familiar with that reference? I was speechless.

Talking to him later, Dan did not think it was a big deal, but I just couldn't let it go. And it wasn't even that he hadn't seen the movie. He has.

In the end, it was his nonchalance at not recognizing a movie reference that I found so infuriating. For some people, I would just let it go, but with my husband . . . we're both big movie buffs. We're both always saying obscure and random lines from movies to make sure the other one knows what it's from. It's Our Thing. So although granted I wouldn't have had this debate with, say, a coworker I don't know well, with Danny it was completely justified.

I asked Dan's mom at dinner the same question to prove to Dan that it was appalling that he didn't recognize ditto. Unfortunately it backfired; she didn't know either! Worse, she hasn't even seen the movie! How can that be? How can there be a person in the United States that hasn't seen Ghost? I take back all that I said about not pestering someone I don't know well . . . not picking up on a Ghost reference is like not picking up on a Dirty Dancing reference.

Oh, please say you've seen Dirty Dancing! "Nobody puts Baby in a corner" is in WIKIPEDIA, for crying out loud!

I decided I needed to do more research. I took a limited poll of just my mother and sister. I texted them the message: "Danny and I are having a debate! Please read the word at the bottom of this message and text back the first thing that pops into your head." And of course, ditto was at the end of the message.

One response was spot-on. Just a one-word text: "Ghost." The other response was disappointing: "I can't think of the movie but it was from the 80's."

So not an overwhelming support of my side of the argument, but at least both recognized that ditto is from an 80's movie. Also, there is no doubt in my mind that if I'd been having the same IM conversation with either of them, I wouldn't have gotten "Huh?" as a response to my un-political cleverness.