"For weeks, I had been scheming to get my mitts on one of these fearsome blue-steel beauties. My fevered brain seethed with the effort of trying to come up with the infinitely subtle devices necessary to implant the Red Ryder range model air rifle indelibly into my parents' subconscious."
In this quotation, the narrator (Ralphie as an adult) explains his plan for getting his parents to buy him the Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. Here, the film uses the narrator's elevated vocabulary and elaborate descriptions as a way to present Ralphie's quest for the perfect Christmas gift with drama and severity, emphasizing how badly his nine-year-old self yearned for the Red Ryder gun that year.
“You’ll shoot your eye out.”
This “deadly phrase...not surmountable by any means” is the automatic response to Ralphie’s expressed desire for the BB gun. His mother responds with the phrase the first time he asks for the present, his teacher writes it on the essay she returns, and even the man playing Santa Claus at the mall repeats it after Ralphie finally comes to his senses and blurts out what he wants Santa Claus to bring him.
"I triple dog dare you!"
When Ralphie's friend Flick casts doubt on Schwartz's claim that sticking one's tongue to a cold telephone pole will make it stick to the pole permanently, Schwartz dares Flick to stick his own tongue to a metal pole outside. The two go back and forth as Flick refuses, until Schwartz utters these words. For the group of boys, this is the most serious type of dare one can lodge at another person, and Flick obliges, only to end up stuck to the pole as predicted.
"Adults loved to say things like that but kids knew better. We knew darn well it was always better not to get caught."
When Mrs. Shields attempts to get the students to confess to who dared Flick to stick his tongue to the telephone pole, nobody speaks up. Mrs. Shields implies that whomever is responsible will suffer the consequences of guilt and remorse, but the narrator remarks that the children knew better than to fall for that manipulative remark. This quotation highlights the disparity between children's perspectives and adults' perspectives, which is a central theme in the film.
"Fra-jee-lay...must be Italian."
A subplot of the film is the conflict that develops between Ralphie’s mom and dad when his father receives a garish lamp in the form of a sultry female leg complete with a fringe lampshade that makes the leg look like it is sticking out beneath a risqué skirt. When the lamp first arrives, Ralphie's father looks at the large box marked "Fragile" and pronounces it with an absurd European accent. This quotation highlights Ralphie's father's preoccupation with transcending the family's middle-class Midwestern status.
“Ohhhh fuuudge!”
The older Ralphie censors his younger self when he accidentally blurts out the F-word after dropping the hubcap to the tire his father is changing. The scene is a significant turning point in Ralphie’s transformation from a child to an adolescent because this is the first time he has been asked to help his father change a tire. Ironically, the swear word was something Ralphie learned from his father, who proceeds to tell Ralphie's mother what happened so he can receive proper punishment.
"I can't put my arms down!"
When Ralphie's mother sends the boys to school, she puts Ralphie in such a thick and puffy snowsuit that it is impossible for him to keep his arms by his side. Every time his mother attempts to push his arms down, they pop back up. Randy's snowsuit has become a memorable image in the film, as he is essentially rendered immobile as he travels to and from school.
"Over the years I got to be quite a connoisseur of soap."
After Ralphie utters the F-word while helping his father change a tire, his mother punishes him by making him sit with a bar of soap in his mouth. This quotation suggests that Ralphie is used to this form of punishment and has even reframed it as a badge of honor. Viewers will likely find this scene relatable as putting soap in children's mouths was a common punishment in the 1940s.
"In the heat of battle, my father wove a tapestry of obscenity, that as far as we know, is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan."
As Ralphie's father fights with the family's unreliable furnace, the narrator describes his father's seemingly unending use of swear words and curses. This is an ironic scene in the film because Ralphie has already been punished for swearing. He blamed it on his friend Schwartz for teaching him the word, though it becomes clear that Ralphie learned that type of language from his own father.
“Next to me in the blackness lay my oiled blue steel beauty. The greatest Christmas gift I had ever received, or would ever receive."
The story is narrated by Ralphie as an adult many years later as he looks back on the events of a particular Christmas. As young Ralphie lies sleeping contentedly in bed, the film closes with the older man confessing that he has never gotten a Christmas present that equaled his Red Ryder BB gun, suggesting the importance of that Christmas in his transition from childhood to adolescence.
