I heard someone on the news this morning mention the CDC and then I mis-heard the next few things he said because I was so expecting the next phrase to be “chem-7.” I had misheard “CDC” as “CBC” and it set off an automatic response inside my head.
Maybe I’ve been watching too much ER and not enough news, but I thought of another one: even though I know that “roger” means “message understood” and “wilco” means “will comply,” I always expect to hear “roger wilco,” even when that would not be appropriate.
How about you? What has TV written with indelible ink into your psyche?
I find Fawlty Towers has hard-wired certain expectations into my mind. Any time I hear the “You started it” / “No I didn’t” kind of exchange I expect someone to follow up with “Yes you did. You invaded Poland!”. Likewise if I hear any reference to someone being “highly strung” I tend to whisper under my breath “Yes, yes he should be” said with a forced artifical smile. There are lots of other examples, not necessarily to do with exact words or phrases. Sometimes it’s just moods and situations that trigger a Fawlty playback. For instance, take any situation in which my progress with a given task is interrupted by someone reminding me that I need to get it done. I always refer to this as a “Moose head moment”, and I do tend to break out into a Fawlty-esque rant viz. "I’m doing it! I’m bloody doing it! I mean what is the point of interrupting me to tell me to do what I was doing I mean what’s the point what’s the BLOODY POINT!!!".
I used to do this quite a lot in offices where I worked. I thought it was just in good fun. I worked with a lot of people who had never seen FT or didn’t remember it, so either way they didn’t know what I was doing. I don’t work in offices any more.
Pretty much everything anybody says to me I connect it to something on either the Simpsons or SNL. Needless to say, people don’t talk to me much anymore.