Posted: Friday, 20 June 2008 11:28AM
Who Better Listen?
Steve Corbett Reporting
Friday, June 20, 2008
Joey Thomas, with all five years of his lifetime experience in the big bad world backing him up, took the phone from his dad and let it rip.
“You better listen,” he fired across the telephone lines yesterday in a voice firm with confidence.
Two days before, Briana, 11, called and instructed me to give her my best shot.
“You better listen,” I growled at her.
She returned fire with her original version of a response that made me laugh so hard I still can’t exactly remember the proper sequence of words – something to the effect of “I always listen.”
We went back and forth a couple of times and then she laughed and we talked about reading and writing and thinking. A great kid, she helped me feel somewhat more optimistic about the future.
That same day an adult caller told me to hang on while he held the phone to the mouth of his five-year-old.
“Say ‘you better listen,’” he told his daughter.
“No,” she said in her tiny, yet firm, response.
“C’mon,” her dad prodded, “Say ‘you better listen.’”
“No,” she insisted, this time with a touch of panic in her tone.
“It’s OK,” I said. “Really, it’s OK, you don’t have to listen.”
Just what I needed – a tyke live on “Corbett” bursting into tears because two big goofs were pushing her into performing the branded slogan for my show that sometimes seems to have a life of its own.
Five-year-old Dominick spotted me in the parking lot at the supermarket a few months back and ambushed me with his best “You better listen.” We had met at the Scranton St. Patrick’s Day parade when his dad told me what a faithful fan of mine - as well as of Hillary Clinton - he had become. A few weeks ago Dominick was on the air telling me “Obama’s not good for America.”
Hey, c’mon, Dom. Come clean, I said. Admit it. Your old man put you up to that one.
He opened fire with another “You better listen.”
We’ve created a monster. But it’s a great, good beast.
The saying came out of nowhere, although my WILK News Radio colleague Sue Henry takes credit for its origin. We were talking one day and “You better listen” came out of my mouth. Radio pro that she is Sue said that we had discovered something that couldn’t have been invented on purpose if we tried.
In the past year, the battle cry call to action has become truly my own as a rallying cry to talk – the watchwords of a community discussion that commands your attention.
Love me or hate me, you don’t want to miss anything. Sometimes the experience feels like watching neighbors argue across a fence on a hot summer night before the cops show up. Sometimes, though, the show feels like a neighbor showing up with popsicles for the kids on the block on that same hot summer night.
“Corbett” is just another neighborhood – an on-air experience that can be and is heard around the world.
A guy from the Back Mountain emailed me this week that he was listening to the show in Beijing, China, and that he was working without success to email me pictures of his kids holding up a hand-printed sign that reads, “You better listen.”
And as much as he is an international traveler who follows world events, he mentioned that he wanted to hear me talk about Luzerne County political corruption when he turned on his computer in a Chinese hotel room at 4:30 in the morning.
Scranton Mayor Chris Doherty regularly gives me his best “You better listen” when we cross paths. And former Scranton Mayor Jimmy Connors has counseled me occasionally to change the cadence of the phrase so it conveys more of a motherly encouragement than a saloon war cry.
Truth exists in both interpretations.
But even as a child I understood the inherent message in one of my favorite Christmas songs.
You better watch out. You better not cry. You better be good. I’m telling you why. He knows when you are sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good. So be good, for goodness sake.
Fifty years later I’m finally on my best behavior. I hope the same goes for you.
You better listen.
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