This morning a little incident threw me back to my high school days and something I was told by my parents a thousand times: “Don’t drag Main.”
Main Street in our little town was about 8-9 blocks long. The main recreation for teenagers was to “drag Main” which meant to drive back and forth several hundred times a night - always turning around at the same spots - waving to friends who were also dragging Main, honking at friends hanging out at the pool hall or coming out of the movie theater, giving tourists a hard time…
Whenever my parents would have me run an errand it was always followed by a stern warning about getting sidetracked. “Run to the store and get a loaf of bread - DON’T DRAG MAIN.”
Well there are the standards but I can’t think of any that are particular to my neighborhood.
My parents used to preface with “Call us if…”
I do remember once my Dad telling me not to get stoned again before a playing gig. I played drums in his country band and had too many beers and speef one night before a show. My cymbals fell over, my timing was off. Ugh. Good thing he was my Dad or I’d have gotten fired.
Me:" …but Iris’ parents allow her to go there/stay longer etc…"
Mom/Dad: I am not interested what other parents allow… if they’d jump into the “Rhine” , do you jump, too?
(Rhein, Germany’s biggest river) and going out to a party or something else was out of the window could not devaluate this kind of argumentation…
My all-time favorite bit from the Hitchhikers Guide:
Arthur Dent: “It’s at times like this, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxication in deep space, that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.”
Five years old and not yet world famous?
When Mozart was your age…
Also:
You vant to be a philosophy major?
Alright! Who am I to say NO; only your
mother. Go, be a philosophy major.
But I vant you should know one thing.
IT WILL KILL YOUR FADDER!
Oh, he’ll say it’s alright; he’ll
pretend he’s happy. You know the
vay he is. Last veek, when he ven to
the doctor for headaches?
Those headaches aren’t headaches!
The slightest shock…
I always had trouble doing story problems in arithmetic. My Dad would try to help me (the sessions generally ended up in hollering) and I can’t count the number of times he started out, trying to be patient, with:
Pop: “First you write down what you know.”
Okay, John has 2 oranges, Mary has 6 oranges.
Pop: “Then you write down what you need to know.”
Well, if I could do that, would I be sittin’ here cryin’? Geez!
“If you get taken away in an ambulance, you’ll want to have clean underwear on.”
“You must have said something to cause it.”
“Don’t go visiting unless you get an invitation.”
She must have had a truckload of concerns about me. Needless to say it’s taken me years to loosen up. I still hew to the last one, though. Well, okay, I’m big on clean undies, too.
“You’re younger than I am”, and “That dish rag (dish towel, dust rag, broomstick, mop handle) will fit your hand”. Just like Dubhlinn’s Ma, she made the hand filling comparison for wishes, but chose a more solid subtance.
Dad always measured things in weeks. “You’ll wake up in the middle of next week”, and “You’ll have to eat from the mantle for a week”. I suppose it was better than the threat of a month.
could not devaluate this kind of argumentation…