Growing Up Southern: February 22, 2018

Once, in a fit of anger, I made an obscene gesture to my sister in public. I had just entered my teens and she was nearly grown, seventeen or so—by Southern standards rapidly reaching “Old Maid” status. In all likelihood, she may have deserved my disrespectful action. She did know how to “pull my chain,” so to speak.

So up went the finger to the delight of my buddies. Not one to suffer affront easily, she reported the incident to our Sainted Mother.

Fearing for my life, I stayed outdoors that evening until darkness and hunger combined in a most insidious way and forced me to answer the call to supper. We ate in dread-fueled silence. Nearing completion of the meal, she asked me to remain after the others left.

She wanted to talk to me.

There it was, either a beating or reform school, or both. Reform school rose in preference as they had a swimming pool, they weren't too choosy about who they let on the football team, and Benny Colclasure was already there. He owed me money. I surmised that would entail some degree of protection against the bigger boys.

There was no protection from the wrath of Sainted Mother. Even my father feared her, in a manner much as I imagined that the Dark One feared the Holy Trinity.

As I mentally computed the most likely sentence for an affront to one’s sister, the others left the table. There was no doubt in my mind that my sister bore a smirk, but I wouldn't look her way. I simply braced for the onslaught.

Instead, Sainted Mother raised an empty hand and stroked her chin. Ah. A short sermon and pack your clothes. Not too bad. I might even make a “B” in math in prison school. There hadn’t been a ciphering whiz sent there from our school since the legendary Willie Lee Bohanon got sent up years before. He was a sergeant on the police force by this time.

“What?” she asked after thinking on the matter at hand for a moment like a lawyer questioning a witness, “would you do if someone called your sister a bad name in front of a bunch of other boys?”

Here’s where my superior intellect came into play. On the one hand, I knew what I would do—laugh my ass off. On the other, I knew the appropriate answer. “I would teach whoever said it some manners,” I said with an air of resolution that both surprised and intrigued me.

“I know you would,” Sainted Mother said, "I know you would, son." That made me feel like a pile of horse manure. My mind swung immediately to a diametrically opposite point of consideration that made me imagine how, Red Ryder-like, I would lay waste not only to the miscreant, but to his buddies as well. A mamma can exert that kind of change of perspective in a Southern boy.

She let it sink in for a moment and then said, “So you think your sister deserves respect?”

By now I did, for sure.

“Other boys should treat her like the lady she is?

Hell yes! I nodded.

“Then how could you expect them to show respect for her if you don’t?”

The feeling I now bore was worse than anything reform school had to offer.

I’ve thought about that lesson quite a bit, lately. I’d like to tell the story to our current politicians. After all, American citizens, even if they might be as opposed to your way of life as my sister was to mine, deserve respect. If we don’t give it, how will we expect other nations to?

Thank goodness for Sainted mothers. Perhaps we could bottle their wisdom and give it to the less fortunate.

Odd thing is ... my sister and I
are best friend now. You just never know.