I find the movie “a Christmas Story” quite entertaining, but there was always one part that kind of bothered me. After Flick gets his tongue frozen to the flag-pole, why is Ralphie worried about “getting caught?” From what is shown, it doesn’t appear he did anything blameworthy. It was Schartz who taunted Flick into doing it: Ralphie was just a spectator, along with about half of the class, it would appear. Is the audience supposed to assume that Ralphie did take part in “putting Flick up to it,” but it just wasn’t shown on camera? Or was it just generally understood by the whole school that Ralphie, Flick and Schwartz were friends and anything one did the others would presumably be involved in? What do other dopers think about this?
How is this a “plot hole?”
Kids always worry about doing something wrong and getting punished. Even being a spectator my be enough to get you “killed” by the Old Man, if you should have known better than to let Flick do it.
I’ve thought of that, but it just seems odd to me that Ralphie seems to be the only one with that worry. (Except for Schwartz, who really did have a reason for concern.) When Mrs. Shields sees Flick out the window and rushes out of classroom all the kids rush over to the window to see what is going on except Ralphie and Schwartz, who just sit quiety at their desks. Maybe Ralphie is just unusually sensitive to fear of punishment.
That’s my thought.
The whole group of kids were culpable of not reporting Schwartz’s predicament. The teacher bringing in Schwartz implied as much.
Ralphie just took off when the bell rung and took off over Schwartz’s pleas for help. This is what he felt guilty over.
This. True story: one day in high school, I walked out at the end of the day to find 2 guys fighting in the parking lot. No idea who they were or what they were fighting about, but there were several dozen of us (at least, maybe a hundred or more) standing there watching them. Was I doing anything wrong? I don’t think so. I wasn’t egging them on or anything. I was probably at least 50 feet away, at the back of the crowd.
But when Coach’s booming voice yelled out, “WHO’S FIGHTING !?!,” you’d better believe that every last one of us took off running.
He got a mouthful of soap because he wouldn’t tell his mother where he’d heard the word ‘fuck’, a word he’d heard his father use regularly. He didn’t say his dad because then he’d get punished worse. So he tells his mother one of his friends told him about it and that kid gets a massive beating from his mother.
In this environment a child understands there isn’t justice and theres no telling how much punishment will get metered out to who. It’s best just to not get caught, which unites all kids against all adults, because they are all physically abusive.
I used to get terribly ashamed of bad stuff that my friends did. In my mind, if they were doing it, I was doing it. We were all in it together, and adults were The Enemy.
Remember, Ralphie really doesn’t want to do anything that’s going to cause Santa to mark him down as “naughty.”
I remember when one of my brothers was getting it for doing something dumb. I could count down the time until my mother would turn and blame me for it too, even if I was in no way involved. Child rearing isn’t the same as it was in the olden days. For that nebulous time of the 40s or 50s that Ralphie lived in his behavior was perfectly normal.
“But the bell rang!”
Ralphie is blameworthy in that he didn’t go get help. He didn’t say to Miss Schwartz “Flick is in trouble.” He didn’t speak up when she asked.
He may not have egged Flick on, but he did nothing when he could have.
“Adults love to say things like that. But kids know better. We knew darn well it was always better not to get caught.”
“Flick? Who’s Flick?”
Right, I labored under the assumption we all know the movie by heart so just set to add context to that line. But I guess it’s a cite. 
What I want to know is why there is a black kid in the class in the 40s. When did desegregation happen?
It’s a little too early for that yearly thread. I’ll start it in a couple of weeks.
While the movie is set in 1939, it doesn’t take place in Mississippi or Alabama- it’s set in Indiana, where integrated public schools had been common for a long time.
As I understand it, that’s a matter of debate given a fair amount of contradictory evidence.
It still happens today. There was never a child rearing tenet saying “be sure to blame the kid who wasn’t even there” in any decade.