I tried poking around for the origin, but came up empty-handed. There are a lot of variations and I am not sure what to look for. Does anyone know?
I remember Letterman making this joke back in the day as one of his two ‘impressions’. The other being a cashier from the 7-11 (“The lotto machine is broken.”). This was during his NBC days, but I assume the origin predates that.
Does anyone know?
No.
This has been shouted at kids as long as there have been lawns. This and every variation.
I should clarify. I am not interested in the origin of when angry old people first shouted this, but instead when this line (and its variants) gained comedic prominence.
As soon as bratty adolescents started mocking adults?
StG
Heck, in middle school we once had a man utter those exact words, while waving a .357 magnum at us damned kids…
Yeah. I was a fat middle school kid, but I managed a solid turn of speed that day…
Doesn’t the grouch ole *spinster at the beginning of “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1961)fuss at the kids for being on her lawn?
*The actress, Ruth White, was an elderly 48!:eek:
The New York Times, September 11, 1912.
Of course, sometimes it’s real.
In my experience, back in the 50s and 60s, lawn care was a much bigger thing than it is today. Many men spent a great deal of time, money and energy trying to achieve the perfect lawn . . . especially retirees who had nothing better to do with their time, money and energy. So it was a big deal when kids would walk on their perfect lawn.
Today, not that many people are striving for that kind of perfection, and it’s become somewhat of a joke.
I just love broad, sweeping generalizations that purport to describe entire populations of large countries. Makes me giggle.
I think there are a lot of people that don’t understand why Hank Hill is funny.
Kathy & Judy on WGN Radio were saying that for years…back into the 90s at least.
:rolleyes: Oh please. Nowhere did I say that I was describing the “entire population” of any particular large country. It’s simply a trend that seems to have been more prevalent than it is now. Go ahead and giggle, if you must.
As a common-day joke, I’ve only been encountering it over the last couple of years. No idea what started the resurgence.
I always thought it was Old Man Warner who lived in the trailor across the street from us when I was 6. At least, that is where I heard it first.
If you search Google Groups, it seems to magically appear around the end of 2002 and picks up useage in 2003. I’d assume a tv show incident in 2002.
There’s a Far Side cartoon (from the late '80s, IIRC) that shows an old man shaking his cane and shouting “HEY, YOU KIDS!” at kids who are standing on his dog, which is lying on the lawn, next to a sign that says STAY OFF THE DOG.
At least some humour in the situation is clearly derived from the stereotype of “Crazy Old Man Waving His Cane At Kids And Telling Them To Stay Off His Lawn”, with the rest of being the subversion in the form of having neighbourhood kids standing on his dog, and the realisation that the occurrence is commonplace enough for the old man to have needed to put up a sign contraindicating the activity.
All of which is a very long (and vaguely pretentious) way of saying “The stereotype was around and familiar to enough people when Gary Larson was doing The Far Side for him to make it the subject of humour”. 
By the same token, I did a search on SDMB, with similar results. Although, there might have been some earlier references from deleted threads.
See, I always thought it was more of a territorial thing. When I was a kid we would be terrified of getting yelled at for cutting through a neighbor’s yard and would take almost ninja-like steps to sneak through without being seen.
In fact, when I do my “grumpy old man” voice, I usually say “You kids get out of my yard!”, not “You kids get off of my lawn!”
A friend of mine from Rockville MD claimed that his neighbor used to yell this at the kids he grew up with in the neighborhood. In his telling of the story, the guy had a particular inflection of voice and an accompanying hand gesture, best described as an inverted had making a waving-off motion. This was circa 1988 when he was telling the story, I wonder if this meme became viral due to him!?!?
(Zombie revival). I doubt it. I grew up in the 80s and as a kid, I had a couple neighbors who would routinely yell at me to get off their lawn. I will admit, my memory of my neighbors has the phrase as “get off my/the grass!” But that was just their particular vocabulary choice. I’m assuming it’s like Harmonious Discord’s hypothesis, that as long as their have been lawns, there’s been people yelling at kids to get off of them.