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Motherwise Tarts ♥Columns Cooked Up for Parents by Mary Fagan
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Cliché Revival: Diplomatic Teaching Tool By Mary Fagan Preamble to this week’s Motherwise Tart - Me, a parent in the maternal state, in order to form you into a more perfect offspring, establish my justice, insure domestic tranquility, produce no regrets, promote your general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty for you as my posterity, do ordain and establish that I have the constitution for showing you what’s good for you whether you like it or not by using any means possible, including quoting clichés that you say are no longer applicable but I consider true esoterica.-------- Praise be my children! It’s time for a cliché revival. Awaken and hear, O precious ones, the lessons hidden from plain sight because no one pays any mind to these sage sayings anymore. Seek ye the wisdom ripped from the yellowed pages of the good old days in the form of these tried and true clichés! Now I ask you my little flock, is it enough to preserve my wits as I watch as those around me stumble through life when the path has already been clearly marked out? No, I cannot. I am called to remove the blinders from those as stubborn as mules and keep them from exposing their worst side to the rest of us and so that we don’t have to fight the urge to call out loud, “O Lord, I told you so!” All raise in praise from the cliché coma! Yes, I said coma, the four letter formula with the power to break it down and tell it like it is. Follow the letters and like Lazarus, you children in the dark will walk toward the light. Heed the messages behind the C, O, M, and A and their saving force. They lay bare the sweet fruit that is ripe for the picking - the wisdom of those who had to learn the hard way. Alleluia! Alleluia! I now call these clichés forward to reveal their saving power and I wait in joyful hope for them to perform miracles! First Call - C = Cliché - You made your bed, now sleep in it. O = Origin - Rejection by a mother of helping a child find an easy way out due to the fact that she is sick of reminding said child not to do that thing and all the million reasons they should not, taking the trouble to go into excruciating detail of all the consequences. She is just plain exhausted, needs a bed and wants some sleep. M = Meaning - You did the thing, now deal with it. Or - why should I clean up your mess when you had fair warning, make that strobe lights and sirens, of the consequences? A = Application - Pay your own fines. Speeding down Main St. in a town the size of Mayberry that has a 7 man police force is dumb because your chances of going unnoticed are slim to none. Save yourself and slow down. That’s the ticket! Second Call - C = Cliché - An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure O = Origin - Ben Franklin wrote this after being burned flying his kite in an electric storm. His mother had always told him not to do this, especially with a key or other metal object tied to it. M = Meaning - Don’t take risks when you know better. Take the time to do it right or you will suffer the consequences. A = Application - (PG rated version) - Applying sunscreen before going out in the Florida sun when you are as white as a lily would have protected you from a nasty burn that would have saved us from hearing about it and saved us a trip to the drug store to buy sunburn cream, not to mention any long-term effects.(NC 17 rated version) - Oh, I am not going there but it still involves protection and a trip to the drug store. Save yourself from the burn of consequences! Last Call - C = Cliché - You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. O = Origin - Horses need water. People would bring water to them, but being of limited intelligence, they would sometimes refuse even though they needed to drink. This is pretty stupid. M = Meaning - It’s easy to show people what they need, It is a lot harder to make them see it is smart to do it. And if that should come to pass, it is even harder to get them to actually do it. Both are bloody unlikely to occur. A = Application - With children, this would be your attempts and offers to help start their six-month project more than two hours before it’s due. With adults, it can be their refusal to use the nicotine patch you have left on their dresser for two years or pointing out they have been driving on empty for the last six miles and the last open gas station is just ahead. Halter Call - C = Cliché: Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free. O = Origin: Years ago, families had their own milk cows and they where were a lot of hard work. You had to get up early to milk, clean barns, feed and care for the cow, and milk it again at night. But extra milk could be sold. Other families found it easier to buy this extra milk rather than have the trouble of owning their own cow. M = Meaning: (Other families) People will find it easier to (buy this extra milk) shack up rather than (have the trouble of owning their own cow) get married. A = Application: Don’t get milked. In closing, let us say: Oh pearls of wisdom, precious and fair, help us to teach those who just don’t care. Provide us with the alternate text to say, “I told you so” in a more diplomatic way. Call them from the coma, awaken their senses, as we use this simple formula to hide our pretenses. For judgment will be swift and we fear it, and when it comes to troubles you brought on yourself, most people really don’t want to hear it. Again. Copyright © 2007 by Mary Fagan. All Rights Reserved. Copies of, or excerpts from the above columns may not be reproduced without written consent of the author. Unsure of copyright issues? Read this for clarification. |
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info@motherwise.us c.2006-2007 by MP Fagan, LTD
