Memorable Quotes
Play Ground Zero:
    One of my sisters' and my favorite quotes involves the subject of play, which, as everyone knows, can be "good", "bad" or ambiguous. Whenever, on the spur of the moment, I try to repeat it exactly, I always fumble it. Last night, while trying to get someone I know to stop a type of destructive play (my effort didn't work), in my focused search for words to describe exactly how destructive this play was my frustration got the best of me and the memorable quote mentally materialized. It didn't fit the situation, was too oblique, so I didn't use it, just reveled in it, but today while idly thinking of other things, I remembered it and decided to record it, here, for future reference.
    In the late spring of 1968 (I remember the time because it was just prior to my olderest sister's wedding) my mother and at least one of my younger sisters was taking a ceramic class at the NCS Rec Center on Guam. Toward the end of one session, due to circumstances I now forget, my absent sisters and I converged on the class; probably to pick everyone up. Greenware, waiting to be shaved before firing, was scattered over the table. Being in high spirits, my sisters and I began fooling around with the greenware, egging each other on to increase the hilarity.
    Finally, my mother, who is as even tempered as they come, exploded, "That's enough! No ashtrays on shoulders, no turkey stoppers in ears, no wedding cakes on heads, NO PLAY-YING!
    The PLAY-YING didn't completely stop but, from that point on, no greenware was endangered. I can't count how many times, in the years since, one or the other of her daughters has found an appropriate moment to recall this quote.

Paddywhacked:
    A good year or so ago during one of my mother's less energetic days, after she'd been blearily up for the morning she decided to take a nap. I was in the living room involved in something, my attention being only peripherally on her. "Okay," I said, vaguely in her direction, "be sure and change your pad," meaning the underwear pad she wore to save her from soiling herself through incontinence.
    When she emerged from the bathroom I asked, again in auto-tone, "Did you change your pad?"
    "Yes," she said, drawing the vowel through an irritated sigh.
    I don't know what caused me to look up and check but I did, and, there she stood, clearly without a pad. "No, you didn't, Mom, go back and put on a pad."
    The sigh turned into a huff. "I did!" she insisted.
    "No you didn't, Mom, look!" I argued.
    "Yes, I did," she said, icing each word. "You just can't see it!"
    Something snapped to inside me and I couldn't resist. "Damn, woman," I said, "Invisible Pads! What a great invention! We need to take out a patent on those!"
    Since then, it has been almost too handy, in similar circumstances, for one or the other of us daughters to exclaim, "You just can't see it! It's like those invisible pads!"

    It's not that I have no appreciation for the dignified pronouncements of my own beloved Ancient One. I've recorded several. My preference, though, is clearly for my mother's Moments of Cockeyed Corrections and To The Point Orders.
    In case you're wondering, whenever one of these incidents is recalled in my mother's presence (which is most of the time), she grins delightedly through a feigned veil of annoyance.
- posted by gail rae @ 13:24   email...this post