MULTIMEDIA-ENGLISH
This is How Babies are Born (The Bill Cosby Show)
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3:35
Video page URL
https://multimedia-english.com/videos/esl/this-is-how-babies-are-born-the-bill-cosby-show-4527
Description

This little girl is having a hard time trying to explain to the doctor how babies are born. Yes, it's not easy, grown-ups can sometimes be so thick!


One of the most hilarious moments of The Bill Cosby Show.

Transcript

- And this is my office
- What do you do?
- I am a doctor for women.
- What do you do with them?
- I deliver their babies.
- Deliver?
- When the woman has the baby inside of her, then I go in and I take it out.
- No you don't. Everybody knows that the stork brings the baby.
- Who-who told you that?
- My daddy.
-  Okay. Well, the stork puts the baby inside of the mother... and then I go in and I take it out.
- Ah aah. The stork brings the baby to the hospital, drops it in the bassinet.
- So you’re saying that the baby is not inside the mummy? Then why is it that the mother gets real big?
- Because she eats a lot of food.
- Now let me get this straight. You say that the stork carries over, puts the baby in the bassinet, and the mother is real big because she eats a lot of food?
- You got it!
- I see. Well, then why is it that the mother has to go to the hospital?
- The stork brings the baby to the hospital, drops it in the bassinet. The mummy goes to the hospital and gets it.
- If the stork does all that, why doesn't the stork just bring it to the mummy's house?
- Because it's too far. His wings will get tired.
- Where does the stork get the babies from?
- Heaven.
- Okay. There is a zillion skillion babies in Heaven. How does the stork know what baby goes with what mother?
- They are in a line. You know, like you go to the baker and get a number.
- Why when I put my hand on the mother I can feel things moving all around?
- That's not a baby.
- What is it?
- Gas.
- Well, thank you for explaining it to me.
- You're welcome, but you still didn’t tell me what you do.
- I'm in charge of gas.

Explanations

WHAT DO YOU DO?= What’s your job.
You can also say: What do you do for a living?

DELIVER= The act of bringing a baby from inside a woman’s body to the outside world. A doctor delivers a baby when he makes it come out, and a woman delivers a baby by pushing it out, so the baby is born.

STORK= A big black and white bird from Europe that spends the winter cold in Africa and often builds its nest on top of church roofs. In European tradition, children were told that storks bring the babies from heaven in a bundle of cloth held with their beaks and flew them down into the right house. This little girl here has a bit more modernized version of the myth which includes storks dropping their babies in the hospital, not in the houses. (see picture of a stork)

BASSINET= A basket with a hood over one end, for use as a baby's cradle. (see picture)

WHY IS IT THAT...= An emphatic version of WHY:
- Why is it that you’re tired? = Why are you tired?
More common as part of a subordinate sentence:
- If you spent all the day at home, why is it that I saw you having a drink with Jimmy at the bar at 5 o’clock?

LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT= Let’s see if I have understood that correctly.
We say this when we want to make sure that we have understood what the other person is telling us and we want to explain what we think they are trying to say, so that we get confirmation from them.
- Oh yes, Frank is very nice and all that, and he’s sexy and handsome and I have lots of fun with him, but he’s not exactly what I’m looking for.
- Ok, ok, let me get this straight. Are you saying that Frank is the perfect man but he’s not good enough for you?!
- Well, I wouldn’t put it that way, but yes, I guess that’s correct.


REAL BIG= (esp. AmE) Really big, very big.

YOU GOT IT!= (coll.) That’s right; you understood correctly.

I SEE= Ok, I understand.

WINGS= Birds don’t have arms, they have wings and they fly by moving them.

HEAVEN= The spiritual dimension where God is and where people who die go if they’ve been good. Heaven is not a place, it’s a dimension, but for practical purposes in our imagination heaven is up there in the sky, so sometimes we use “heaven” just to mean “the sky”. In this case it is not clear what sense of heaven the little girl has in mind, but probably a mixture of both: heaven is up in the sky, God creates the babies up there and the storks are a kind of angels that go up there, pick the babies and bring them down to earth.


A ZILLION SKILLION= (especially baby or humour language) A zillion is a very very big number, millions of millions. A zillion skillion is a number much much bigger than a zillion, more or less similar to a megazillion :)


LIKE YOU GO= (coll. esp. AmE) As if you went..., as when you go...
Using LIKE as a comparative conjunction is very common in American English and also in colloquial British English. In standard BrE LIKE can be a preposition or a verb, but not a conjunction:
- I like children (verb)
- The moon is like a big white cheese (preposition)
- I feel like I have fire inside my stomach (conjunction: AmE and colloquial BrE)
- I feel as if I had fire inside my stomach (conjunction: standard BrE)

THE BAKER= A shop where you can buy bread, and usually confectionery too (cakes, biscuits, etc.). A baker, or bakerman, is the person who makes bread, but here it means the shop where they sell bread. The exact word should be “the bakery”, but you could also say “the baker’s shop”, which most of the times simply gets into “the baker’s”, but today you can also hear “the baker”, especially in American English, without – 's – referring to the shop, not to the person who makes bread.

YOU’RE WELCOME (AmE) = Not at all (BrE)

I’M IN CHARGE OF= If you are in charge of something, you are responsible for that, you work with that or you supervise that.