#5 - "Above all else, never be common."
As you've heard me say before, mom was subtle in her lessons, so I had to think about this one for a while, and the more I thought about it, the more complicated it became. What is "common?" Who says? In the words of Leon Trotsky, "Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures," so trying to measure commonness felt tricky, illusive, and a little dirty. My measure of common tends to look like a high-school dropout with three crying babies, living on welfare and watching soap operas in her trailer while a pit bull on a chain barks all day. However, if I asked that gal her measure of common, it might be her meth-junkie mother who raised her kids in a car while she did tricks on the street for drug money. Someone probably thinks I am common because no one would recognize the name of the college I graduated from, and because I buy my clothes at Target and consider Ellen Tracy "designer."
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