Whenever I sit down to enjoy a slice of pizza or a Mickey-D quarter pounder with cheese, my mother’s voice echoes in my ears, “You’re digging your grave with a knife and fork.”
Strange, as I tend to lean towards food that requires the least amount of cutlery – burgers, chicken pies, spaghetti bolognaise is tough, but I’ve found a thick drinking straw can just as easily do the trick.
My mom is a veritable volcano of clichés. One of her favourites is, “Don’t have a champagne taste on a beer bottle budget.”
Genius!
Some of them I took literally as a child – I thought one should “save your money for a rainy day” so when you couldn’t play outside you could at least go see a movie at Cavendish Square.
Not a bright kid, me.
She taught us that “wisdom comes with Winters” and to “always forgive your enemies because nothing annoys them so much.”
I’ve always wanted to pen a self-help book entitled, ‘Mother’s Book of Wisdom’ – I envision the sole copy of this handed down through the generations; yellow pages, leather-bound, notes in the margin.
Forget the propaganda of the global schooling systems – teach the kid how to read and let him get on with it.
My mom is one of those rare individuals who doesn’t like to sugar-coat reality. When I was sixteen and going through the obligatory boo-hoo-I-hate-the-world phase she asked me, “Do you think your friends are going to want to be around someone who’s miserable all the time?”
When, many moons ago, she arrived at her parents place to find my grandfather with an MX-6 parked outside and a car salesman on the crux of a big commission, she looked the young salesman up and down, turned to my grandfather and said, “You don’t want that, daddy, it’s a poor man’s Porsche.”
A tongue of sharpened steel, wielded as mercilessly as a shogun samurai’s sword.
In a round-about way she has taught me that while knowledge may come in the form of a university text book, wisdom is best passed along through proverbs and sayings.
Words: Nathan Casey
Pic: Lucy Yearling
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