I’ve recently noticed a lot of writers using the following technique to convey a tone of folksiness or to give credit to the wisdom of elders. They say, “My mother used to tell me…” or “As my grandma liked to say…”. (For some reason it’s never Dad or grandpa… presumably because, for the males of days-gone-by, it was better to be a man of action, rather than a man of words… just a guess.)
The advice passed down from one generation to the next in these anecdotes ranges from the mundane (“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”) to the obvious (“It’s bad luck for a skunk to die under your house.”), but I have to wonder if these “life lessons” conveyed to their readers from these writers aren’t completely fabricated memories, since I can’t seem to recall any of these types of pearls of wisdom coming my way during my own family's special moments.
MY mother always used to say… well… I can’t think of ANYTHING she said with any regularity other than “Barry Manilow has a new album coming out!” which was a warning that the livingroom stereo system would be unavailable for the next few months. Additionally, this meant that the livingroom itself was no longer a place to ‘live’ unless you were a complete sadist.
MY grandma used to tell me, “We’ll see,” whenever I asked to do/or see/or watch/or buy something. It’s the only phrase I can hear her saying in my mind and the only thing I can take from it is that she was non-commital about everything in life.
My great-grandmother, Gladys Wallace, however, did impart a keeper. I’ll never forget how, at each holiday dinner such as Thanksgiving or Easter, very near the end of the meal, she would belch loudly, then say in that gravelly voice of hers, “S’cuse Pig” and then keep eating. It was always the highlight of the meals and was beat out only after her daughter, (my grandma) developed Parkinson's late in life and would purposefully fall backwards into the wall, having suddenly lost her equilibrium, so as not to end up on the floor. The decorative dishware hanging on the wall would clang loudly with every "thud" and we'd all stop eating and then tentatively ask if she was allright, to which she'd answer infuriatingly, "We'll see."
There WAS one piece of advice that my mom gave to me that I will probably always remember even though she only said it once and it was never mentioned again. It was, I would later realize, the one and only “sex talk” she would have with my brother and me. Like a lightning bolt, it came out of nowhere, spurred on by I don’t know what, as she popped her head into the livingroom momentarily to speak to us, and then she was gone again, leaving my brother and I to look at each other curiously with shrugging shoulders.
This bon-mot, as my mother once told me, “Never use Vaseline on a condom cause it will eat right through it,” is mine to share with my progeny.
This week's Time cover story is "Why Barack Obama Could Be The Next President".
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