As I was performing a little phalangeal maintenance this afternoon, I started thinking about some of the cautionary tales my mother used to tell us when we were young children in an effort to keep us from developing bad habits. I guess most moms do that, but she told stuff I’ve never heard anywhere else.
For example, to keep us from biting our nails, she would speak ominously of the runaround. “That’s an infection all the way around your finger,” she’d say, leaning in starting with “all” to really make the point. Well, fine, but see, I think I was probably 12 or 13 before I even really understood what an infection was and why it was potentially dangerous. So I remember nodding solemnly and keeping my mouth shut, because it was clear that’s what she wanted, but having no idea what the big deal was.
Same when she would tell me no for a box of sweet cereal or a soft drink, because she’d lean in just the same way and tell me that sugar was poison to my body. (She called a soft drink a “bellywash,” by the way.) And I see I talked about that sweet cereal before.
But my favorite was what she told us to keep us from picking our noses. She would tell this crazy story about this guy driving down the road with his finger in his nose, and he had a wreck and his head slammed into the dashboard and he rammed his finger into his nose to such a degree that he couldn’t get it out. “So then he had to go into the hospital with his finger in his nose,” she’d say, nodding knowingly and thoroughly confident she’d made her point.
So for more than 30 years, I’ve had this hilarious vision of this guy busting the ER doors open, running around erratically with his finger stuck up his nose. He has a striped shirt and a mustache.
You ever hear anything from your mom that you never heard anywhere else?
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