Quote of the Week...from Scut Farkus

What, you're gonna cry now?  Come on, crybaby! Cry for me, come on! CRY!     ---Scut Farkus

Scut Farkus was the big bad bully character in Jean Shepherd's immortal 1983 movie A Christmas Story, for which he compiled a number of already published short stories and wrapped them together within a holiday theme.  It's become a TV staple, with a couple of channels running nonstop marathons at Christmas.  I already knew Jean Shepherd in the mid-1970s for his late-night humorous monologue shows on my local talk radio station in Miami Beach, WKAT/1360, shows that originated from the mighty WOR/710, (50,000-watt clear channel) in New York City.  I also had read the short story he wrote to which the above quote pertains.  Little Ralphie, around eight I guess, is all excited as Christmas approaches...he desperately wants a Red Rider toy air rifle, but his mother says no, "You'll shoot your eye out".  And now his own teacher has just written the same thing on a homework assignment he wrote about it...and Ralphie is trudging home in the snow, tears falling from his eyes.  Suddenly Scut Farkus, the school bully...accompanied by his little, stocky toady Grover Dill...jumps in Ralphie's way, confronting him and ridiculing his crying.  And then our hero does something unexpected: he charges his adversary, pushing him to the ground, proceeding to beat him up.  The scene didn't look realistic to me and, besides, I knew from Shepherd's earlier short story that it was the more manageable Dill that Ralphie fought, not impossible Farkus.  I also had a problem with the bully in this story being a social outcast among the kids...where I grew up in South Florida during the sixties and seventies, it was the bully who was the popular kid on the block or at the bus stop.  I could take the above quote of an imaginary figure in different directions, but since I always remember this jeering taunt of Scut's, I decided to turn it on its head and make something sweet about it.  You see, we have a year-old mixed breed puppy dog named Daisy, and when Melissa ("Mommy" as far as Daisy is concerned) ever goes into another room in the house with the door closed, Daisy sidles up to the door and begins to whimper just like she did when she was very young and temporarily separated from her litter.  And every now and then when she does this, I go straight into my Scut Farkus routine, repeating almost verbatim the above quote...but with some good-natured affection thrown in...