One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times – Chapter 51

#51 – “Always use a tablecloth with a bed sheet under it. The cloth gives a warm feeling to the setting, and the extra padding helps keeps the noise down.”

Two very specific memories surface as I ponder #51 of the one hundred things my mom taught me a million times.

(1)  Mom was a Nazi about proper-table-setting, and

(2)  Our house was always very quiet.

I never quite realized how quiet my childhood was until I became quite old (sorry, couldn’t resist). I was the last child in a family of five, and apparently an accident since mom as 40 and dad 60 when I was born. My closest sibling (brother) graduated and left for college when I was in the first grade. I don’t even remember my three sisters living at home. So during my childhood mom and dad were older, my siblings were all married or in college, TV hadn’t really taken hold, we didn’t have dogs, and the radio was only played at low volume, late in the evening while mom and dad played dominos, quietly. It was quiet, too quiet for a kid.

So I was enthralled by the chaos and racket in my friends’ home.  I’d go over to their houses, most of which contained multiple kids and dogs, and it felt like some absurd and entertaining circus of humanity, at least compared to my home. Click on Read More Below

House Rules by Jodi Picoult

The thing about critiquing books is that you feel the obligation to be critical. Be that as it may (I love saying that), critiquing House Rules by Jodi Picoult (pronounced pee-koe) is a challenge. I tend to be a little snobbish about what I call “serial writers,” authors publishing one or more books a year. I’ve given up reading Grafton, Grisham, and a few others I’m too pompous to admit, simply because they are so commercially successful. I have an innate aversion to being mainstream.  Jodi Picoult’s books tend to be the exception because she writes exceptionally well about morally provocative topics, i.e., a child who doesn’t want to give her dying sister a kidney (My Sister’s Keeper – a personal favorite), the trauma of a horrific school shooting (Nineteen Minutes – another favorite).

In House Rules, Picoult takes on a typically hot topic. Jacob is an eighteen-year-old with Asperger’s syndrome who is accused of murdering his social worker. There’s a younger brother suffering from lack of attention from a mother struggling to maintain a life for her child with a disability, an incompetent but lovable attorney, a barely there dad who was in fact never there, and the social worker’s asshole boyfriend. I’m not sorry that I read House Rules (Picoult’s books are impossible to dislike), but I did finish it feeling a little angry. Here’s why:

1.     Obviously the book would have only been 50-pages long if someone simply had asked Jacob, “So Jacob, what happened?” But it was irritating that no one did – not the mom, the detective on the case, nor Jacob’s attorney!

2.     How the story would have played out if Jacob had told what happened might have made a more engaging story, i.e., how the law would deal with it, the kids' relationship with their reappearing father, etc.

So read the book? Sure. But if pretty good just isn’t good enough for you, read “My Sister’s Keeper,” or “Nineteen Minutes.” Picoult shines in those two. House Rules left me feeling like it just wasn’t leaving quickly enough.

One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times – Chapter 50

Photo is of my dad (middle in tie) at the grocery store he owned in Oak Cliff, Dallas, 1930's. My brother said that dad gave food to many, many people during the depression.

#50 - “When mentioning several people in a sentence with yourself, always list yourself last.”  To know if you should use “me” or “I” leave everyone else out of the sentence, and if it sounds right with “me” use “me,” otherwise use “I.”

You’ve heard me say before that mom was all about appearances. Well, she believed with ever fiber of her being that what came out of one’s mouth could make or break one. I may have been born and raised in West Texas where “done went” and “ain’t” are part of the local vernacular and have absolutely nothing to do with intelligence, but even as a small child I winced when someone said them.  I still do.

Aside from the grammatical and appearances issues, I just think that #50 is a really handy mnemonic.  And “mnemonic” is a word I adore. Mnemonic.  Mnemonic.  I love saying it, but occasions to use mnemonic don’t come up that often. I mean how do you segue from, “How’s work SueAnn?” to “Good. Working too hard.  You know how it is, but let me tell you about my favorite mnemonic.” Click on Read More Below...