If you’re tired of telling youngsters to hurry up and close the refrigerator, try this admonishing them with this phrase or one like it: “Stop letting the penguins out!” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Close the Refrigerator”
Felicia Fadlon wrote us from Los Angeles to share a linguistic heirloom.
Her mother, Janet Myers, was from a farm in Franklin County, Indiana, and the phrase is, stop letting the penguins out.
Do you know this?
No, that’s new to me.
That’s what you say to a kid who’s standing in front of the open fridge for too long?
And Felicia says, I now laugh when I catch myself saying it to my own kids, stop letting the penguins out.
Totally taking that.
I know.
I can just imagine if I were four years old and I had somebody say, stop letting the penguins out, I would be pushing the door shut so quickly.
And it turns out she thought that it was her family’s own expression, but not at all.
Lots of people say it.
Lots of people say it.
In fact, I found online stop letting the penguins out refrigerator magnets.
That’s cool.
And what I love about it as a parent is that anytime you can inject humor in telling a child what to do, you’re more likely to get the result you want.
Right.
And you want that door closed.
