When my mom was a kid, she used to be bullied by this little twerp named Dickie Smitty, who had a nose so fragile it’d bleed at the slightest breeze, so he’d threaten the other kids that unless they did what he wanted, he’d hit himself in the face and tell the teacher or his mother that they’d beaten him up and thus get them into trouble.
One day Dicke wanted Mom’s ball or toy or something, and made his usual threats at her, and she got fed up and decided to just go home. True to his word, Dickie smacked himself in the face and stood in the street, blowing his nose as hard as he could so it got all over his shirt, then ran home, wailing theatrically.
Dickie’s mother was so incensed that someone would hurt her dear little darling that she actually came to my grandparent’s house to admonish my grandmother for rasing such a wicked girl, Dickie behind her, grinning like a cat.
Mom, sick of Dickie’s Shit, declared she had done no such thing, and if she’d REALLY hit Dickie, it’d look like this– at which point she flat-out decked him, blackening his eye and possibly breaking his nose for real.
“AGATHA!*” exclaimed my grandmother. “We do NOT hit people to make a point! We use our words, like this-”
Grandma cleared he throat to enunciate properly.
“Patricia, your son is an ugly lying son of a bitch that won’t get anywhere in life like his tramp of a mother. Get the hell out of my house.“ Then slammed the door in her face. Mom got grounded for the weekend for hitting him, so that grandma could teach her how to use her words properly. She never needed to hit anybody ever again until she actually started taking karate.
*Mom’s name isn’t Agatha. All names in Family Lore are changed to protect identities. Excpet Dickie’s first name becuase it’s an essential component of the story.
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On Using Your Words
Published
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