Friday, May 25, 2018

Allep Pie


Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. A beautiful sentiment that all parents teach their children. It is meant to show that words can roll off your back and you do not have to deal with them any more whereas a physical blow can leave an injury that needs to be cared for after the altercation is finished.

The truth is that we have all been deeply hurt by words. Maybe someone called you stupid or ugly when you were a child. If that was a person whose opinion of you mattered those words would cause great pain. Perhaps someone made fun of you and it seemed to catch on with other people until everyone was making fun of you. Torment. Often a misused word can bring a misgiving you have about yourself to light and exaggerate that into what you see as a serious flaw.

I have mentioned that my family did not have much money. My mother made a lot of our clothes. But there were families in town who spent a bit more on clothing than we did.

I can remember some of the women bringing huge boxes of clothes that their daughters could no longer use. They were expensive clothes and in practically new condition. I loved getting those clothes because they were so nice.

What did bother me was that when they delivered the boxes the women did not pay attention to what they were saying. Even at that age I knew they were trying to do a good deed; it was in fact a good deed. I not only liked the clothes they brought but I needed them too. They were nice people doing a nice thing.

The problem was that they almost invariably said, "I thought Emma could wear these. If they don't fit just throw them away." I always felt like they were saying that they were not good for anybody else but they were good enough for me.

I believe in hand-me-downs. There is no sense in throwing out perfectly good items because you cannot use them for whatever reason. But I make sure if I give something to someone else that I say, "If you cannot use them maybe you know someone who can."

Another example is tasteless jokes. I have to be honest and say that often they are funny. But they are funny at the expense of others.

I was at a conference. A bunch of us met at the hotel for drinks after the meetings had adjourned for the day. Several people were standing around telling jokes. Most of the jokes were tasteless. Of course I had to join them.

I told my favorite tasteless joke. They all laughed. But afterward a woman came to me and told me that one of the other women had left because of my joke. It touched a nerve with her and hurt her feelings. I felt terrible.

I went to her room and asked if I could speak to her. She did not want to talk but was gracious. I apologized to her and she was such a nice person that she accepted my apology. We hugged each other and I left. I have not told another tasteless joke since.

My mother was laughing one day. She had seen my niece arguing with a friend. They were little girls and Mom wanted to make sure the argument did not turn into blows. But it was an argument using words as weapons. Finally my niece screamed, "Well at least MY mother buys real gold jewelry!"

How much did it hurt the other girl? I do not know. I do know that the girls are still good friends 30 years later. If only that was the worst thing we could think of to hurl at someone when we are angry with them.

Mom also liked to tell about her days as a waitress when she was young. There was a young man who came in once a week like clockwork. In those days people were called retarded and she just assumed that was his affliction.

He always ordered allep pie meaning apple pie. Mom would serve him and speak to him for a few moments before moving on to her next customers.

One day a woman came in to thank everyone at the cafe for being so nice to him. The family had to institutionalize him and he would not be coming in any more.

Another time she saw customers sitting at the table who were being very animated while they talked. Their hands were going a mile a minute and they talked and talked.

When she went to the table to take their orders she decided to join in and waved her hands excitedly. To her chagrin she soon realized that there were people who could not hear at that table. They had been using sign language as well as spoken language to communicate.

I hope these examples demonstrate that things are not always as they seem. And especially that words have power. It is so easy to unintentionally hurt someone with a careless word. And all we need to do is think before we open our mouths. Think. Think.

22 comments:

  1. I am all for hand me down clothes and I love browsing the charity shops. I hate spending money on new clothes!!! Have a good weekend, Diane

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  2. my parents belonged to a lower middle class family dear emma and i was lucky that it never was thing which made me feel lesser than anyone else by the grace of God
    in my girls high school many girls belong to the families of landlords because they were as girls not allowed to send away from home in private english medium schools but may be it was my luck that they never overcame my senses but will you believe that i was the one who impressed them by my humbleness and patience

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    1. I have never been less-than anyone. It was the fact that I felt they thought I was that upset me.

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  3. Word can sometimes hurt worse than fists.
    R

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    1. Bruises and pain from fists heal. The words can bounce around inside your head forever.

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  4. Think before we speak. Amen.

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  5. I am touched by the story of the woman who accepted your apology. I am impressed that you had the strength of character to apologize, and I'm heartened that she had the heart to accept it.

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    1. That was a lesson for me that was learned the hard way. I never want to hurt someone that way.

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  6. Life will surely be tough if we keep all these bad words with us for a lifetime.

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  7. My small Southern town was starkly divided along economic lines, perhaps moreso than most places, so while I always had everything I needed without having to accept charity, I also knew that my parents and I were a long way down the social pecking order, and to this day, I loathe rich people. I now realize that few of the people in that town would have been considered rich had lived in a wealthy area, they were rich to me, and I equated being rich with being a snob. I still do, but now I've found another reason to hate rich people, and it is that I don't believe anyone can become rich without underpaying the people off of whose backs he or she got rich. Of course, this doesn't answer the question of who is and who isn't rich. I recall hearing that when the movie "The Grapes of Wrath" was shown in Russia, the poor Americans in the movie were envied by the even poorer Russians. We only know how poor--or how rich--we are by looking at the people around us.

    Did you come away with the kind of rage toward rich people that I experience, and were those women who gave you clothes really so innocent in their clear implication that they were giving you garbage?

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    1. I have no rage against rich people. I do feel anger toward anyone who uses others to further themselves. I cannot know what those women thought. My feelings are that while they felt as if they were doing something charitable they also did not feel that I was as worthy as they. They were doing a kind thing but perhaps for the wrong reasons.

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    2. "they also did not feel that I was as worthy as they."

      Did you happen to catch the PBS program last weekend about the life of Louisia May Alcott? She grew up more poor than yourself, at times having to rely upon others not just for clothes but for food, and her mother addressed what you're talking about here.

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    3. I did not see that program. We were fortunate in that we were never in danger of going hungry. We raised a lot of our own food.

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  8. Even at my age, I believe in hand-me downs and have found some great bargains at local thrift stores. I grew in in what would be called average middle class and my family was not "well off" yet we always had enough to eat and clothes to wear. My parents were thrifty and passed along those values to their 2 children. Wearing previously worn clothes doesn't make a person less a person by any means. I like the way you handle giving items away, Emma.
    As for words carelessly or thoughtlessly said, yes they can wound. It's also happened that I have said something that hurt someone's feelings and better to apologize and ask for forgiveness as you did then to let it pass. I am not a teller of any type of joke because I seldom find them funny and also can't remember the punch line!

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    1. A funny story should make people laugh. It should never be about hurting or making fun of someone. I forgot that and and still ashamed.

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    2. "A funny story should make people laugh. It should never be about hurting or making fun of someone."

      Of course, it shouldn't be about hurting someone, but making fun of someone is more problematic. I daresay that pretty near everyone makes fun of others, that doing so is often entirely appropriate, and that the more intimate two people are, the more comfortable they are with making fun of one another's silly words and behaviors. In fact, if I knew a married couple who never made fun of anything the other person in the relationship did or said, I would assume that there was something seriously wrong in that relationship, and that they were therefore obliged to walk on eggshells to avoid setting the other off. I know that Peggy makes fun of me, that I make fun of Peggy, and that I wouldn't have it any other way because every last one of us does and says funny things. Just be clear that I'm not talking about being passive aggressive by knowingly going after someone's vulnerable spot and telling them that they "just need to lighten up and learn to take a joke." For example, I would never make fun of Peggy's weight because, fit though she is, I know how hard she struggles with it. I would likewise hate it if she made fun of my backwoods Southern accent because I've always been sensitive about the sound of my voice (being a stutterer as a child and being unable to pronounce three of the letters in my six letter name didn't help).

      If someone else told you that they had said whatever it was that you said, would you beat them up for years this way? Sure, you might wince at the memory, but you know what was in your heart that day, and even if you were speaking from some dark place, you quickly took measures to rectify the fact that you had unwittingly hurt someone. While we're on the subject of hurtful "humor," there do exist minutely judgmental people who go through life looking for every possible excuse to browbeat those around them with their self-righteous outrage. They are called the politically correct, and the only way to avoid offending them is to never tell a joke, and even then I could never get along with them.

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    3. Being ashamed of my actions is a way to remind myself to think before I open my mouth. I do not beat myself up because the woman I hurt was so gracious and we both left that part of it behind us.

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  9. Also, thanks for your comment on a recent post with photos of our grandchildren. They are growing up faster than even we would like, but of course we are not aging any!

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    1. They are beautiful children. I can see that they are all loved and happy.

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