Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Telling Phrase 23: "Help! I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up!"
This telling phrase is the famous catch phrase of Life-Alert. A company that makes what I call a 911 necklace. This phrase was another phrase that was used for many things in my house, as we often had students over from my parent's church youth group. This was often used by people who had fallen down while playing variations of tag. It was also used to exclaim things such as, "Help! I'm about to drop this heavy box!" This phrase was basically used to indicate that someone needed immediate assistance, or that someone had just done something stupid that would merit a decent sized scar.
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Are there larger implications here? Does the phrase also suggest that, sooner or later, we cannot go it alone? I think the way this phrase swept across our culture and was lampooned by SNL, it has become a goad for the American idea of self reliance. Nowadays we need to admit that we cannot always get up all on our own.
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