Friends, I am shook. Shook. It’s about Rudolph. You know: the red-nosed reindeer. My whole childhood, it seems, has been a lie. And yours too, maybe! This harrowing turn of events was brought to my attention via TikTok when kid’s indie artist Darelle London (@darrellelondon) asked a question…
“I have a question for Millennials: you know when we were growing up and we would sing ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ and we would add the little — ‘like a light bulb!’ — those little things in-between the lines? So at the end, in my school, we would say ‘You’ll go down in history like…’ — there’s two options — ‘like the Blue Jays!’ or ‘like the Yellow Pages!’”
Right away, I’m absolutely horrified and vaguely feel like my Christmas has been ruined, because this is not right! But there’s more, so we must press on.
“I was recently talking to my husband about this,” London continues, “His school didn’t say that!”
Oh thank God.
“They said, ‘like Columbus!’”
Dead. I’m dead. This is a ghost talking to you right now.
Anyway. London says this conversation made her realize that every school might have different little add ons for “Rudolph” and she wants to know what other people said.
You’re not prepared for the answers…
First, the good news: the most common answer in the comments (indeed, the first several) is “like George Washington.”
“I had no idea anybody sang anything besides ‘like George Washington’ so this is blowing my mind right now,” reads one and, hard same.
But alas, it does seem that London was onto something and there are, it turns out, a whole lot of alternatives. Here are some of the ones that were mentioned at least twice…
“Like Columbus!”
“Like Lincoln”
“Like Wayne Gretzky!”
“Like Monopoly!”
“Like Pinocchio!”
I find these last two interesting because where I come from both Monopoly and Pinocchio are mentioned elsewhere in the song. So are these lazy kids repeating material? Bad form.
“Like Shakespeare!”
“Like The Flintstones!”
OK, this one is genuinely clever.
“Like the Dinosaurs!”
“Like Napoleon!”
“Like Page 43!”
This is apparently an Australian thing. Several people said it. I have… absolutely no idea what that’s about.)
“Like Mickey Mouse!”
“Like Yogi Bear!”
“Like Toothpaste!”
So there you have it: the varied, possibly regional, splendor of the Millennial generation. We are large, we contain multitudes.
