Transcript of “Been There, Done That, Got the T-Shirt”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Nick Valenziano in Palm Springs.
Hi, Nick. Welcome to the show.
A couple of weeks ago, you were talking with someone who was asking about different expressions and where they come from.
And it was about, I think, sort of when somebody was finished with the subject, you know, how to move on from it.
And you asked for other suggestions or other terms like that.
And the one that came to my mind was one that’s puzzled me for a long time.
When you’re really tired of a subject or somebody’s just beating a dead horse or they’re trying to get you to give another chance to a restaurant or a relationship even.
And then when you just had it, you say, been there, done that, bought the T-shirt.
Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt?
Bought the T-shirt, yeah.
And the first part of it makes perfect sense to me, but the bought the T-shirt just seems, oh, like an odd, an odd little add on.
Yeah. What’s on that T-shirt?
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, and, you know, if the implication is that, OK, we’ve been to this show before, we’ve been to this rodeo before.
Well, why didn’t you buy the refrigerator magnet or the souvenir ashtray? Why the T-shirt?
Been there, done that was circulating in Australia by the late 1970s.
You know, been there, done that.
And alongside that, or a little bit after, there was this growing trend in this country, for sure,
Of offering a T-shirt as a souvenir for being present for an event or participating in an event.
I have some old 5K and 10K T-shirts that I got from running in a road race and, you know, or going to a concert or visiting a place.
And in the early 1990s, there were advertising campaigns for Diet Mountain Dew and Pepsi Max.
It involved daring feats of, you know, these young guys who were base jumping off the rim of the Grand Canyon.
And these young guys are like, did it, done it, been there, tried that.
So the idea was, so what? And then, as I said, there was also this trend of T-shirts memorializing this and that. By 1982, you see people getting T-shirts that say, my parents went to New York and all I got was this stupid T-shirt.
Oh, yeah. You can find that actually in the 70s even.
Oh, is that right?
Yeah.
Okay. I remember seeing newspaper articles where people were mentioning this kind of locution like it was cool and new and clever.
But anyway, so there are lots of different variations of that.
Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, been there, done that, got the T-shirt or worn the T-shirt, got the T-shirt, going home, have the T-shirt, won the trophy.
So they’re kind of those two similar threads going on at the same time.
But your elaboration of it has been there, done that, bought the T-shirt?
Is that what it is?
Bought the T-shirt, got the T-shirt, something, one of those variations.
But that does shed some light on it.
And I keep coming up with all kinds of questions for you guys.
You do a great job.
And I always enjoy it.
Thank you so much, Nick, for the compliments.
And thank you for the call.
We really appreciate it.
Yeah, call us again sometime.
Stay cool there in Palm Springs.
I definitely will.
Thanks.
All right.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Australia, you’ve got something else to be proud of.
What’s funny, in the United States, the first time I really saw it pop up when I was digging into this was Lauren Tweese, who played Julie the cruise director on the TV show The Love Boat.
Yeah.
She used the expression, been there, done that, when she was talking about having been married before in a newspaper article.
And she calls it an Australian expression.
So it’s perfect.
And then not long after, there’s an athlete who also says, I got this from Australia.
How interesting.
Because, you know, there is this older catchphrase in Britain from the late 19th and early 20th century, been and gone and done it.
And that usually refers to marriage.
Been and gone and done it.
So I don’t know if there’s a connection or not.
Oh, interesting.
So we might have another fork in the road.
More work to be done, as always.
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