Curious, aren’t they, the words people say that shape us, for good and bad for the rest of our lives?
Some laughable, some, er, not so much.
So many of my father’s advices, as he actually said them, I did not take. He had a way of teaching by mock advising you to follow through with an act he took on faith you would not commit. So, I’ll start with a small sampling of his choicest.
3. “Careful where you step, kid.”
This gem demands an explanation. My father, my sister, Diane. and I had just left a showing of the film “Grease” in downtown Seattle in 1977, and were amiably walking and talking on the sidewalk, suspecting nothing, when an object just ahead filled his eyeballs.
“Step on that!” he pointed with “alarm” in his voice.
I looked, and “that” turned out to be a large, and clearly fresh, dog turd, at that moment a mere nano- meter from my upraised right sole.
I am convinced to this day. I must have executed, the quickest, most artful suspension of a moving human foot ever in all the annals of sinful man. The speed with which I managed the feat cracked up my old man something fierce, and he trotted out the “step on that” story at inopportune moments for the rest of his days.
2. “Don’t put your finger there.”
Dad was an electrial engineer, deep down on his profession and its practicioners in the fall of 1984. As we were heading to the University of Washington to start my second year, he warned me that there were likely to be engineers and future engineers running about the campus and that fact compelled him to offer this timeless bit of advice on handling the blighters when I spotted them.
“You listening?” he asked, leaning in. “Okay, here’s what you do. Just take your left index finger and stick it up their left nostril.”
“Uh, dad, hate to let you down but friend or foe, I will not be a-putting my finger up anyone’s nose.”
When I related this story to my dorm mate, Ed, today a chemical engineer, he took it to heart.
“Is your dad going to stick his finger up my nose?!”
When I mentioned this odd moment years later, dad had forgotten all about it.
“I said that?! Really!?”
Those memories were amusing and harmless, because I knew he did not expect me to follow through.
My 6th-grade teacher’s frequent objections to my existence were at the opposite end of the spectrum as you will see.
1. Teacher tears into student
One day, a teacher kept me after school to talk to me about my struggles with mathematics. Here’s how she framed the lesson.
“You are the stupidest boy I have ever met!” and “You’re a disgrace to the entire school!”
Problem is when you’re a 12-year-old kid, still in development, your image of yourself is as soft and uncertain as a lobster’s new shell, you take what people say to heart.
I did. To this day, in frequent dreams, I stand on a tall pile of books and papers, and there she is at the bottom, pushing the stack back and forth, back and forth.
If there’s anything valuable in which I’ve just written about my teacher,it is that when you open your mouth to say something, especially to kids, be mindful what you say and who they are. A harmful comment could stay with the kid for the rest of his or her life.