Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Duffy Moon

When I was a kid, my friend Doug used to always quote an after school special that he had seen called The Amazing Cosmic Awareness of Duffy Moon, which apparently aired in 1976, according to IMDB. He used to say, "You can do it, Duffy Moon!" which is, apparently, a phrase used in the film, perhaps repeatedly. Enough to stick in my friend Doug's head. After hanging around with Doug for a while, I picked up on the use of the phrase, "You can do it, Duffy Moon!", even though I had never (and still haven't) seen the original movie. Then quite a few years later, I had been using the phrase fairly regularly when I met Jeannie, who had also never seen The Amazing Cosmic awareness of Duffy Moon, but who, in time, also started using the phrase. Then, after Jeannie and I went off to our respective colleges, Jeannie was using the phrase "You can do it, Duffy Moon!" and met her friend Gena, who also had never seen The Amazing Cosmic Adventures of Duffy Moon. Tonight Jeannie was talking with Gena on the phone and learned that Gena still uses that phrase. And thus, a phrase has been passed down through 3 degrees of separation from someone who has actually seen the film from which it was taken. Is this how figures of speech get started?