A fellow I know says "I'm in deep lasanga." I like that. He's an old guy. People ask him how to know what God's will is for them. He says, "Know God, Help others." Then they say, "That's it? That's all I have to do?" And he says, "That's it." But I picked up on the deep lasanga thing. It's wonderful to be able to repeat a funny term or phrase, or to affect a mannerism that reminds me of a particular person.
My children have come up with some good ones. Their mother. Of course I speak in much the same way my father does, right down to certain inflections which inspired many people calling on the telephone when I was living at home years ago to say, "Jack?" and launch right into whatever they had called to say to my father. My brother had the same experience too, even though to my ears we speak quite differently. I have a cousin who is like a bother to me. When I speak with him I hear my father's voice in his.
Anyhoo, I have heard the telephone ring, and one of my sons answer it: "Hello? ...No, I'll get him. Hold on." When I get to the phone the caller says, "I thought he was you."
I found these great prints at a garage sale in very nice frames. One was of an early telephone. There are two others of old-fashioned radios, and since I love old radio - I'll post the Jack Benny program on my other blog tonight - I picked them up.
Telephones used to be connected to the wall by a wire. That wire usually was installed quite near the front door of a house. I remember when the fashion was to have it installed in the kitchen, but that happened later. Houses had formal entry hallways - many of them. That's where the phone was, on a little table where the keys and letters were often thrown, next to a not extremely comfortable chair. Often there was a staircase on the other side of the hallway, leading to the house's private rooms. I think of what that means symbolically.
At the front door you had the option of turning a caller away. If one wished to visit because he had some business with you, either commercially or socially, he would knock on your door, or ring your doorbell. When the phone was in the same place it was like a door. The ring was an entreaty to enter which one had the option to refuse.
Perhaps the not extremely comfortable chair was to discourage people from lingering in the doorway too long, or talking on the telephone too long. The conversation could only extend to what the butt could bear, just as the mind can only absorb what the butt will bear at a lecture. That brings bare butts to mind, which is the spelling error the computer would not have warned me about.
I love to go to lectures, and make the audience stare, By walking 'round on people's heads, and messing up their hair.
We are always deeply affected by each other, and we teach each other every day - whether we know it, or not. Whether we appreciate it, or not. Every conversation, even the most banal, is an important event. People - all people - deserve the respect that such a contribution has earned them. Even electronic ones.
My father taught me that the language I used in conversation said more about me than any other thing known about me - more than who I say I am, more than other people say I am; more than where I come from, how I am attired, or what I look like, who my family is. He told me to speak with respect to people, and never to use offensive terms - even if I knew the person whom I was addressing did not respect himself or me enough to guard his tongue so well.
Once a person said to me, "I hate you because you never swear!"
That's OK. I know if I ever did I would be in deep lasagna. I don't know if my sons will pick that one up. They are growing up in a land of venison burgundy stew and soft serve ice cream - not diesel fumes and pizza parlors. They may never had eaten lasagna. Well golly, it's been a coupla few years since I did.
Coupla-few. I like that one too.
