Old Wives

If ever there was a never-ending source of confusion and befuddlement, it's these "old wives tales." I think I was introduced to the concept back when color TV was still young and I couldn't understand what all the fuss was about the Wizard of Oz because it was still black and white on our black and white TV. Where's the color?

And, just who were these Old Wives anyway? You mean to tell me that what happens when you get married is you become old right away? That made some sense; it certainly explained my crabby mother, and come to think of it, she didn't look much different than the Wicked Old Witch from the West, who must also be an Old Wife. OK, so my mother was a Wicked Old Witch Wife, and I promptly ran behind the dining room door and hid when I heard her coming.

And then I kept hearing, "oh, that's just an Old Wives tale" along with those cute sayings like, "be careful what you wish for or you just might get it." Well, isn't that the point of wishing for something? Oh, I wished hard that my mother would never discover my hiding place behind that dining room door, especially when she had a comb in her hand or when my baby brother was crying. For some reason, when he cried, I got spanked.

"Don't get mad, get even" popped into my head when I started to mull over ways to help someone who is fearful of having an issue with anger. What? Advise someone to take revenge and make sure it's good? Where is the Old Wife that came up with that one?

It's not too difficult to see that, even though I've been adult about four times longer than I was a concrete thinking little child, those young years still have an impact! Just in case you have a bit of this trap in you, I'm not married, so I'm not an Old Wife, and you can believe me when I advise you to be very careful of the things you say to your young child! Stuff like this can make a person absolutely certain to be stuck between a rock and a hard place...