~ A Periodic Essay by Wanda Rader

Rules to Live By

 I was born in July. As yet another birthday came and went, I got to thinking about age and wisdom. I’ve been on the planet for over sixty years. Have I learned anything? I was a student for sixteen years. I learned enough math to get by, some basic science, a lot of history, and even some Latin, which turned out to be very useful. I learned a great deal about literature, and got a solid grounding in grammar, thanks to Mr. Rackish and Mr. Saiers. Unlike today’s students, I even got some training in art, and in home economics, I learned that napkins were part of a proper table setting, and that there was a right way and a wrong way to wash dishes. I learned how to sew an apron, and have never used one since. When I got to college, I learned no more about science and math, though they tried. I did learn a bit more history, and explored geology. Since I majored in what was then known as “English,” I learned a good deal more about literature, and even dipped my toe into journalism and creative writing. I learned how to build theater sets in a class called Play Production, got a greater appreciation for classical music, and even tried my hand at golf and archery. I was no good at either, which I will always believe was due to my left-handedness. I should note here that, over the years, I have blamed most of the things I’m not good at on my left-handedness.  To prove that this is not as far fetched as it sounds, the only time I was ever fired from a job, my boss told me it was because I was left-handed. Honest.

            College was also where I was trained to be a high school English teacher. Sort of. They can’t really train you to be a teacher. Either you are a teacher or you aren’t. I wasn’t. I taught for exactly one year, and then ran screaming into the night, swearing I would never do that again. I haven’t.

            By the time I earned my bachelor’s degree, and headed out into the larger world, I thought I had been taught everything I needed to know. I was wrong, of course. That’s part of the problem with being young. You think you know everything, because you don’t know what you don’t know. It takes a whole lifetime of living to find out that there are and will always be things you don’t know, and that those things will rise up in the middle of the road and demand your attention at the most inconvenient times. For example, I had no idea how to be a parent until I became one. No matter how many books I read, or classes I attended, I could not learn what I needed to learn until I was confronted with the reality of childrearing. I’m still not sure I know enough to rear a child, but I did the best I could.

            Now there’s a bit of wisdom I’ve gleaned. If you really and truly do the best you can, there is still no guarantee that things will turn out the way they should, but you will always know that you did your best. Which leads me to another bit of wisdom. Wisdom is often circular.

            Very often we encounter wisdom and don’t know it until much later. My mother was a wise woman (and sometimes a very foolish one, but that is just the way human beings are). I didn’t know she was wise until I reached a certain age and began to see life through her eyes. She didn’t know she was wise. In fact, it was not important to her to be wise. She just wanted people to see that her way was the right way, and follow along quietly. That faith in the rightness of her actions meant that she was a powerful teacher, because she really and truly believed in what she was teaching. That is why, when she said that it was a sin to take something that did not belong to you, I believed her.

            “If you find even a straight pin on the floor of someone else’s house, and you take it, you are stealing,” she would warn me and I knew she was telling the truth. She made an honest woman out of me while I still had baby teeth.  Here’s a story that proves it. One day, I went to a drugstore, and when I had purchased what I needed and returned to my car, I realized the clerk had given me a five dollar bill instead of a one dollar bill in change. I hurried back in to correct the error, and in the process, locked myself out of my car. It cost me $25 to get the car unlocked, but that clerk sure appreciated my honesty!

            My father was a wise man, and I think that a great deal of his wisdom was gained at great cost during his service in World War II. He never spoke about that time in his life, but I think it made him take a deeper pleasure in the good things of life, be they ever so ordinary. He loved trout fishing and often took me along. It was from him that I learned the wisdom of patience. We would sit for long periods in comfortable silence, watching our lines bobbing in one of the many excellent trout streams in Potter County. “Just wait,” he would say if I got fidgety, “if you want to catch fish, you have to be patient.” Since he always came home with his limit, I figured he must be right.

            My father also taught me that there are times when it’s all right to break the rules, and this is one of the most valuable lessons I have ever learned. Perhaps I took this lesson so much to heart because it was diametrically opposed to what my mother believed. She believed with all her heart that the secret to success was to obey all the rules, no matter how hard it was to do so. She also believed that her rules were the most important rules of all, and breaking them was very, very, very bad.

            As I think I have noted in other pieces I have written, I was allergic to strawberries and chocolate when I was a child. I broke out in hives after eating either of these. My mother had pink medicine that quickly took the hives away, and it tasted like peppermint, so I really didn’t pay much attention to my mother’s insistence that I not eat berries from our backyard patch. It was harder to come by chocolate, which I loved just as much as I loved strawberries. My mother made sure that nothing I ate had chocolate in it, and warned friends and relatives not to give me anything chocolate.

            There was a small diner a short walk from our house, I think it was called Renwick’s. It had a pinball machine, and my father loved to play pinball. I think he may have picked it up in the service, or perhaps when he served in the CCC before the war. About once a week, he would take me with him to Renwick’s so he could play a game or two of pinball. He would sit me on one of the stools at the counter, and I would whirl round and round until I got dizzy. He would order a root beer for himself and then ask me what I wanted. I knew exactly what to ask for. In a flash, I was pulling the wrapper off a huge, brown Fudge Sickle. So chocolaty! So cold and creamy! So forbidden!

            “Taste good?” my father would ask with an knowing grin, taking a swig of his root beer. I would nod, too busy licking to speak, and pretending I didn’t know we were both being very disobedient. I would finish the treat while he played his pinball game, then he would check my face for telltale streaks of chocolate, wipe me clean, and, hand in hand, we would walk home. He never told me not to tell my mother, and I never did. The hives would arrive, and she would demand to know what I had been eating, and I would shrug, and mumble, “Nothing,” and she would look exasperated as she spooned the peppermint medicine into my mouth. My father never seemed to be around for these exchanges. I still love Fudge Sickles, but they never taste as good as they did sitting on that stool in Renwick’s Diner. I think they have gotten a lot smaller, too. That’s another thing I’ve learned. Nothing tastes as good now as it did when you were a child, and everything has gotten smaller!

            I will leave you with one more life lesson my mother taught me. It also has to do with food.

            “Never eat anything that isn’t the right color,” she told me once, when we were at a Girl Scout banquet. She was eyeing the Jello salad we had just been served. It had probably been made by one of the Rebekahs, the ladies who did most of the catering in our little town. The salad was a sort of Pepto Bismol pink, with a dollop of mayonnaise-like salad dressing on top that was colored a peculiar shade of green. We passed on the salad. Much later in life, I found out that the dressing on the salad was Green Goddess dressing, made with avocados, and it’s delicious. So sometimes, despite your doubts, you have to take a chance . . . and that’s the final and most valuable bit of wisdom I have to offer. . . sometimes, you have to take a chance.