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...

LOGGING ON TO THE IVY LEAGUE

Well, it's official. I have to give up sleeping. There's just too much out there to learn and I can't stand it. I've always loved to learn, but am terrified of the scholastic environment because I don't test well. I absorb information like a sponge, and seem to have an above average capacity to understand it, but then it just seems to go somewhere, I don't know where. Ask me to regurgitate information, i.e, on an exam, and I panic! Actually, I can do it, I got through college with pretty good grades, but it required lots of memorization, and sheer terror. I guess all the reading and learning I've done over the years is in there somewhere and surfaces in an occasional brilliant idea or solution, but instant recall, which my husband has and for which I am extremely jealous, doesn't exist for me, and it makes me sad because I love learning and I wish I could remember everything I've learned. I guess I just have to keep feeding a craving that is never satiated.

Movie-A-Minute

OK. This is too funny. Click on the Movie-A-Minute title above, which will take you to the Movie-A-Minute website. Then click on a movie title and read the summary.

I thought The Bridge on the River Kwai was particularly funny.