I have been racking my brain for the last couple days trying to remember where I heard this quote: “Lady, if we were your kids we would whip ourselves.” That probably isn’t exactly how it was said but it should be fairly close. Does anybody have an idea where it came from?
I think it was Groucho Marx… sorry, no cite.
To my ear, it sounds like a variation on the last line of the following exchange, widely attributed but which I have been unable to locate a good citation for:
Lady Astor: Sir Winston, if I were your wife, I’d poison your tea.
Winston Churchill: Madam, if you were my wife, I’d drink it.
Churchill-Astor give at least some legimacy to the attribution.
It seems from this:
http://www.moviequotes.com/archive/bynumber/3056.html
that it was a slight misremembering of a Little Rascals quote… but more likely it’s an older source. It sounds very like a caption from the old Punch magazine, before it went bad.
Mel Brooks: If you were my kids, I’d punish you.
The Gang: If we were your kids, we’d punish ourselves.
Thanks, Jenericho I believe you are right. I thought it might have been from The Little Rascals but I couldn’t remember, and everyone I asked thought it was familiar but couldn’t remember either. Now if I could just remember what scene that was in…