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Communicating with Clarity, and Humor
Mealtime was serious at my childhood house. Children were to eat, not speak. They were also to eat their vegetables before their meat, not drink their milk until done with everything else, and not dare to rise until they had been excused from the table.
“Please may I be excused from the table?” is a mouthful for a small kid. But, you mastered it, or you sat there. Mastering it meant not changing the words, either. “Can I be excused?” would be met by this answer: “I don’t know can you?”
Yes, my parents were grammar sticklers. Even the use of pronouns was a touchy subject. Innocently referring to my mother as “her” was disrespectful and grounds for some quick discipline. In addition, there was no tolerance of a Brooklyn accent in our Brooklyn home, and one of the biggest disagreements I ever had with my mother was her constant reminder to me that warm-blooded animals were “mammals,” not “mamamals.”
I was a bit less strict with my own children, who started saying, “Please excuse the table?” as toddlers, and I couldn’t stop giggling about it. It persisted way longer than their realization about what they were really saying. So does “all of the sudden” which they still think is the way to say “all of a sudden.” (Sorry, Mom!)
As a writer and communicator, these stories come back to me, as my mother knew they…
