I will always be happy to answer this question! When I answered this question last year, I linked back to this post: Meeting Ralphie: My Crochet Tribute to “A Christmas Story”
Basically, two years ago, when it was the 40th anniversary of “A Christmas Story”, the original cast had a convention in Cleveland, where most of the movie was filmed. It was the largest reunion of the cast since the movie was released. I drove the 10 hours from my home in North Carolina in order to meet Ralphie, aka Peter Billingsley. I mean, I did stay with my sister so it was nice visiting her too. I actually bought tickets for me, her, and our other sister and one other person whoever would have been home to go. My oldest sister was the only one who could go with me, so when we were standing in line to get in, I gave my other two tickets to people in line who didn’t have tickets yet.
I get very deep and meaningful with my description of the experience in my original post. But a quick summary is that when I met Peter Billingsley, I gave him a crocheted version of him in the infamous bunny suit. When I toured the house where it was filmed years prior (also in Cleveland), the tour guide said that he had kept the original bunny suit as a souvenir after the movie was done. So, in honor of that, I made a replica for him.
It was THE coolest experience giving it to him. My hands were shaking when I walked away from his table. Last year, I was still a little timid about posting pictures of myself and revealing my true identity here, but since that is no longer the case, here’s an unedited picture of the moment I gifted him his crocheted doppleganger:
I also paid extra to get a professional photo op with him:
To be fair, I did meet three of the other cast members and got pictures with them too.
First up, Zak Ward who played Scut Farkus. Yes, his name was Scut, not Scott.
Then, J.D. Robb who played Schwartz:
And finally, Ian Petrella, who played Ralphie’s little brother, Randy:
There were SO many cast members there, but to get a picture and autograph with each one, you had to pay up. It started to get pricey so I opted to skip meeting the people who played Flick and Grover Dill. There were other cast members like the man who played Black Bart, the elves from the mall Santa scene, and a couple of the other kids that were in Ralphie’s class. I had to save my money after all for the mini leg-lamp they had on the souvenir table. And a t-shirt, had to get a t-shirt.
I’ve got lots of autographs and pictures from that event that I really should frame or do something with. But in the meantime, I’m happy just having those pictures on my phone in my “frequently shared” folder because you better believe I share them with anybody who will listen to me talk about the time I made a crocheted Ralphie and gave it to the guy who played Ralphie.
The only thing that could top this, is getting to meet Jim Carrey. There’s a post about that in here somewhere. I haven’t met him yet, but one day…
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