100 Things I Want To Tell My Children And Grandchildren, #35

Books Can Change Your Life

I’m probably doing something terribly illegal here, but when I saw the article in today’s New York Times, The Book That Changed My Life, I read every single one of the stories and was so glad.  I was also reminded of the book that changed my life, and I knew I wanted “Books Can Change Your Life” to be my #34 of the 100 Things I Want To Tell My Children And Grandchildren. 

The World’s Great Religions was one of those coffee table Time-Life books so popular during the 50’s, the size and heft of a bag of cement and chocked full of colorful pictures. It talked about the ten or so most highly practiced religions of the world, and as a six-year-old I remember thinking, “Where are the Baptists?” I had no idea that come Sunday morning everyone in the world didn’t put on their best garb, grab the covered dish out of the oven, and head over to their Methodist or Baptist Church for Sunday school then church.

But in the book there were dark-skinned women in iridescent saris, cows being worshiped, rooms full of prostrate praying men and no women, cathedrals draped in gold, men with curls instead of sideburns, and statues with many arms and one foot in the air as though dancing. Who were these people? And who were Allah, Buddha and Shiva? 

In addition to attending the Methodist Church in my little home town, when doing sleep-overs with friends I also went to their churches  - Baptist, Church of Christ, Pentecostal, and Christian. Not sure why, but my Catholic buddies were never allowed to bring me along and I really wanted to go. All that getting down on your knees and the pageantry seemed so glamorous and exciting. 

The common thread of all the services I attended was “We’re right, they’re wrong and they’ll go to hell for it, and you’ll go to hell if you’re not good, but even if you’re not good, but you’re sorry, you’ll be OK”. And there seemed to be a conspicuous lack of scientific proof for any of the various beliefs. 

Significantly due to The World’s Great Religions, I grew to believe that if 8-billion people couldn’t agree, it was beyond me to reconcile. So my religion is just this: Be nice and help others when you can.  

What book changed your life?

Click on "Read More" below for “The Book That Changed My Life” from the New York Times. 

One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times – Chapter 70

#70 – “Always put on lipstick so you won’t look so washed out.”
(Photo is of The Book Goddesses, clockwise, Debbie Kern, Loralee Martin, Me, Cathy Crabtree, Cathy Weaver, Debbie Tate and Sandra Martin.)
Anyone who knows me knows that I take this one of one hundred things very seriously. You won’t catch me without lipstick very often. It’s sort of a defining characteristic: my trademark. When I told an old boyfriend one time that I bet the first thing that attracted him to me was my boobs, his reply was, “Actually, they were the second and third things. The first was your lips.”

Mom was never without lipstick either, although her choice of color was decidedly more conservative then mine. I lean towards the “Look at Me” reds and “I’m A Hot Bitch” orange. I think there are some self-esteem issues there, but I don’t want to talk about that. I want to talk about lipstick.

I loooove lipstick! I’m the Imelda Marcos of lipstick. I just did a quick and dirty count to see how many tubes of lipstick I had in my makeup drawer, purse and car, and was rather horrified to discover there were only 32! Of course I did do a major purge a couple of weeks ago, taking cast offs to Goodwill.

Aside from the emotional investment, my financial investment in lipstick is also substantial. I figure I buy 2-3 tubes of CoverGirl Outlast All Day Lipcolor (my fave) per month, and at $10 a pop that’s about $360 a year on lipstick. However, I used to wear Chanel Rouge Hydrabase Crème Lipstick, went through 2-3 tubes per month, and those cost $30 a tube or $1,000 per year. Just for giggles, lets calculate a lifetime investment: $50,000! Holy Gloss, that’s just obscene! But then, I got to be me. Click on Read More Below...

One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times – Chapter 61

(This is the house I grew up in. Funny, I thought we were rich and our house was huge!)

#61– “Take good care of your teeth.”

Some of the things mom taught me a million times just seem so obvious, like #61, “Take good care of your teeth.” But when I was busy being a teenager, a college student, a wife and mother, and a career woman, taking care of my teeth didn’t seem that important – probably because I have superior teeth. Case in point (an idiom - my word of the day), my dental appointments go something like this...

Receptionist: “May I help you?”

Me: “I have an appointment.”

Receptionist: “Are you a new patient?”

Me: “No, I’ve been a patient of Dr. O’s for 20 years.”

Receptionist: “Well, I’ve been Dr. O’s receptionist for 20 years and I don’t remember you.”

Me: “I know. You never do. I’m the one that you never make any money off of.”

Receptionist: “Oh yes, I remember you now.” 

You would think she was paid a commission.

Actually the only person excited to see me is the dental hygienist, who always remembers that I’m such an easy cleaning job that she can plan her vacation and write poetry while working on me.  I also know that at some point I will become the dental equivalent of a cadaver. Click on Read More Below...

One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times – Chapter 58

#58– “Never pull the skin on your face.”

(My sisters left to right are Gloria Sidney, Dorothy Belle and Vienna Mae – all of whom are on the far side of 70 and the short side of 80! We may all need a neck job, but the skin on our faces looks dang good.)

Us Wade gals are genetically blessed when it comes to skin. I say this not in reference to my skin, but rather in reference to the skin of my mother (right up until the day she died at the age of 98) and my three older sisters, all of whom are still kicking and have complexions that look younger than their years. Or perhaps it is simply because of mom’s #58, “Never pull the skin on your face,” which she taught us a million times.

Mother knew that mean ole’ Mr. Gravity needed absolutely no help when it came to the pulling of skin. Honestly, you’d think that some genius would have solved this problem by now. Why we didn’t push our daughters into medical research seems ridiculously illogical at this point in my life!

I just got off the phone with a friend. We were contemplating the creation of a really low budget fat farm, like $10/day. A place that doesn’t mess around when it comes to “helping” you lose weight - sort of a “Super 8” of spas. Here’s how it would work. You sign an irrevocable contract stating how much weight you want to lose. Then you are locked in a bare-bones room with only water to drink, no food. Then, no matter how much you beg and cuss, they won’t let you out until you drop the weight. I honestly think there may be a market for this. I know that’s the only thing that would work for me anyway – affordable, effective, bada-boom. 

So back to #58 and our skin.  I brought up the affordable spa thing because our face, our weight, our hair, the way we dress – in a word, vanity, is such a dominant theme in most of our lives, and which also has some pretty scary religious implications! I looked up vanity and found a smorgasbord of reference, none of them good. Click on Read More Below...

One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times – Chapter 34

#34 – “Always wear a slip. You don't want anyone seeing through your skirt. That looks cheap.” (Photo - Me, my sister Honey and mom. Mom and I in suits and hats, gloves and corsages, on our way to Europe - 1958)

Admonitions to not “look cheap,” is a reoccurring theme in the one hundred things my mom taught me a million times, but I have a little trouble wrapping my head around the concept of "cheap." Is that like prostitute cheap or like Wal-Mart cheap. I’m not sure, but knowing mom, I think that looking cheap is the antonym of looking classy. But then do we all define classy the same? I define classy as self-assured, smart, accomplished, courteous and respectful in all situations. I suspect that others, including mom, define it more by the way someone dresses.

So, if not wearing a slip and therefore revealing what’s under your skirt is cheap, let’s examine that. The evolution of my underwear-wearing is very upside down, and circular. When I was young and solid and would have looked good in a burlap bag, I wore just about every piece of underwear available – bra, panties, girdle, hose and slip. Now, when I need all the help I can get to keep it all contained, I do good to put on a bra. Except of course when I want to look better than I really do. In those instances, I have an arsenal of garments scientifically designed to contain and smooth out virtually everything from the tops of my shoulders to my ankles. So what the hell? Click on Read More

One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times – Chapter 31

#31 – “Don't ever admit your age or that you have children because people will automatically categorize you and deprive you of opportunities.”
(Mom and my Brother JS)

When I was young and had children this one of one hundred things my mother taught me a million times really made me angry. I told her that was outdated thinking, old fashioned. My generation was a lot more sophisticated. Employers wouldn’t dare discriminate against a woman because of her age or the fact that she had children. That was before I became an employer, blinded by a misguided sense of duty and the bottom line. Click on Read More...

One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times - Chapter 15

#15 - "You don’t want to be too clean. If you are too clean, your body never has a chance to build up a resistance to germs."
I know there's some science at the bottom of this one of one hundred things my mom taught me a million times, but that doesn't keep it from feeling a little creepy. I've never been one of those gals that must bath twice a day, and have been known to go camping for a week without a real shower, so I guess this lesson of mom's stuck - and if I really think about it, it stuck a little too well. OK, brace yourself, because it is going to get real.

There is a fine line between a good people smell and a bad people smell. My friend Isabel in Mexico, who was probably the "realist" naturalists I've ever know, told me that work perspiration doesn't stink, but stress perspiration does, and she's right. Take a whiff of you pits after a fun workout, and then take a whiff after a stressful phone call - you'll see what I mean. Click on Read More Below...

One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times - Chapter 4

#4 - "Things Lay, people Lie."

I have been called pretentious, and having spent most of my life trying to appear smarter, prettier, and more successful and interesting than I am, I'd have to agree. Of course that is relative to how smart, pretty, successful and interesting I really am, so I don't think my pretension is particularly psychotic, but perhaps that last statement was.

How does all of this relate to mom's lesson #4, "things lay, people lie," which she taught me a million times? Well, mom was all about appearances, and grammar was one of the many rungs on the ladder to being smarter, prettier, and more successful and interesting. Mom believed that grammar, if executed poorly, doomed you to being "common," which in her mind was the seventh level of hell.

Conversely, she believed that if one executed grammar well, one could avoid the hell of commonality. By the way, I never heard my mother say hell, or damn, or any other expletive other than "deeee-ern," which wasn't even "darn," but when said signaled unparalleled anger. Not being common is lesson #5, so I'm not going to get into that one just yet, but like "the uncertainly of life (lesson #2)," "not being common" is an overarching theme in the one hundred things my mother taught me a million times. Oh, and for the record, not all of my mother's lessons stuck; I know that. Click on Read More Below...