As one whose thoughts often outpace his mouth, I have experienced my fair share of unintentional spoonerisms.
At some point, though, I realized that spoonerisms weren’t something to be ashamed of, but rather embraced. There is much bemusement to be found therein, and sometimes by intentionally spoonerin’ it up one can result in getting easy credit as a humorous person.
Hell, Yakov Smirnoff made a whole career out of it. If you’re old enough, you may remember his whole line of In Soviet Russia… jokes, featuring such classics as:
In Soviet Russia…cars drive you!
Maybe Yakov smirnoff
or:
In Soviet Russia…TV watches you!
Also Maybe yakov smirnoff
A few interesting side notes here. First, this specific type of literary construct is officially known as a Russian Reversal.1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_reversal Yes, a bit racist. I know.
Second, technically a spoonerism refers to transposition of the initial sounds of a multi-word phrase, whereas this falls under the broader informal category of transpositional humor–NOT to be confused with the more narrow trope of transpositional puns.2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transpositional_pun Got it? Super.
And lastly, according to an uncited source on Wikipedia, while Comrade Smirnoff is most commonly associated with Russian Reversals, they long pre-dated him, and in fact, he rarely employed them.3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_reversal
The point of the story is that if you’re going to blog about a poorly or misconceived notion of yours, maybe you should at least do a Wikipedia/Google-level of research before you manage to live-blog proving yourself to be an ignoramus,4I’ve noticed the phrase ignorant slut used on several occasions recently. Like, is that a thing? And is that a phrase that is certified cancel-culture proof? Asking for a friend… yeah?
Also…the joys of going down the rabbit hole of a Wiki-venture, amiright?
Well, my half-ass mental associations notwithstanding, I’m determined to forge ahead with my praise of transpositional humor in general. I present to you, in no particular order, a handful of spooneristic/In Soviet Russia musings.
One of the best ways we can contribute to society is by passing on our values to our children.5This point is actually quite debatable, given the subjective nature and wide spectrum of “values”, which pretty much statistically ensures that for an given value held, there is a non-zero portion of society who is diametrically opposed to it. My misguided adulation of Yakov is one of the many values that I’ve attempted to pass on to my offspring.
This transference of ideology began at my Elder daughter’s bedtime, for which I am typically responsible. At first it was a bit confusing to a 4-year-old why, whenever she told her Daddy she needed to “say her prayers,” she would be met with the retort:
In Soviet Russia…prayers say you!
A Very responsible and thoughtful father
In fairness to me, this was a step up from “Your mom says her prayers!” Side story: after enduring more than enough of my overplaying the your mom trope, she finally had enough: “You keep saying that. What does that even mean?” Oh, the wisdom of a child…
Anyways, she eventually grasped the general concept…except she didn’t quite nail the execution. For example, she graced me with this little nugget:
In North Carolina…you sleep in your bed!
The elder
I quickly figured out that she was actually doing a double-spoonerism in her head, somehow skipping to the spoonerified version of the phrase as her starting point, and ending up with a phrase in which the two spoonerisms just cancelled each other out.
She was thinking herself funny when, for all practical purposes, she was just stating very obvious things. Bonus points for switching “Soviet Russia” with “North Carolina”, though…
While not an exact analogy, and not quite transpositional in nature, I can relate to the Elder’s error, having done something similar with a familiar pun. An actual transcript from a conversation I had with myself this past year:
Some random external source: “Blah blah blah…Ships, Ahoy! Blah blah blah…”
Me: ” ‘Ships, Ahoy!’ Ha ha. That’s very punny, saying ‘Ships, Ahoy!’ You know, like ‘Chips, Ahoy!’ the well-known name-brand cookie…”
Also me: “It does seem odd though that the maritime/pirating industries would go out of their way to make a baked-good based pun…”
Me, again: “Oh…right. ‘Chips, Ahoy!’ is the pun. Yeah. That makes waaaay more sense.”
Overly objective me: “Good lord, I’m a ----- idiot…”
Normally, I’m a law-abiding citizen, always using crosswalks at the appropriate time and never jay-walking.
However, a few years ago, I really needed to catch my bus that was sitting at a red light, with the bus stop only a 50 yards or so past the intersection. Both of which were on the opposite side of the street from me.
With the bus’s light about to turn green, I knew that it would be impossible for me to catch it if I waited to properly cross in the crosswalk.
So, carefully dodging oncoming traffic in the lanes closest to me, I angled across the street from the corner of the intersection directly towards the bus stop, hoping to cross right behind the bus as it came to a stop, and then hopping on just in time.
As I made my way across the last two lanes of traffic and with the bus almost directly in front of me by now, I took one last look to the right to ensure that no more traffic was coming from that direction.
Seeing that it was all clear I continued along my path-of-least-distance, but as I turned my head back straight ahead–HOLY SHIT, THE BUS IS STILL IN MY PATH AND MOVING FASTER THAN EXPECTED!
Apparently, I had anticipated it to have been out of my path and stopped by time I needed to cross the far lane. Instead, I came within about 4 inches of losing part of my face to the back corner of a moving bus.
In other words:
In North Carolina…bus gets hit by you.
my inner yakov smirnoff
Footnotes & References:
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