When I was a kid my mother told me never to put any money in my mouth because Dirty Old Men had been handling it. I had no particular idea in my mind of who or what these Dirty Old Men who went around handling money all day looked like or actually did.
Neither, it seemed did my father who, one day, finally asked the question.
"Oh George," she laughed in a-we're-all-grown-ups-here kind of way. " You know what I mean. You brought one here once."
She went back to reading her letter. My father, who was not in the habit of dragging ancient money-handling parties in off the street, looked astounded.
"What the hell....?"
"Oh, George, you know you did."
Two sentences beginning with "George". My mother was flustered. When she began to get terribly busy plumping up cushions and aligning newspapers I also knew that she considered my father was being disingenuous and forcing her to look daft. As if the fact that he had brought one home one evening wasn't burned across his consciousness until his dying day! He must, though objectively he couldn't be held responsible, subjectively have been beating himself up about introducing the snail-trail of nastiness into the Innocent garden of the Family Home ever since! And she was being made to look as though SHE was making a big deal out of it.
My father then said "Pet, I..."
So phew, that was all right then. "Pet" meant amused (I didn't learn the word "patronising" until a long time afterwards).
"George!" Whoops. Three strikes and you're out, George. Now she's angry. "That.. that.. man!" Oh yeah! The slight stutter. She is furious. He knows EXACTLY who she means!
"What man?"
"The man with the...the...doo-dah"
It was pretty much downhill from there - my father genuinely having no idea what on earth she was talking about, and my mother genuinely feeling he was being deliberately obtuse until at last, goaded, she would hiss:
"Of course you know.The one with the new thing - oh what WAS the bloody thing called? You know perfectly well, its a...a.."
Light would begin to dawn and my father would hazard "infra-red, night sighted telescopic lens for Military armaments?"
"Yes! she would crow, vindicated "That doo-dah!"
Because of all the convolutions of ever having to sit through conversations like these when querying some of my mother's more bizarre statements I, though puzzled, had learned not to enquire.
In the final instance my mother's explanation that some mild mannered business man doubled as a Dirty Old Man could be stated thus: Because when she went into the guest lav. straight after him the hand-towel was unused. This meant he hadn't washed his hands. Which in turn explained why he was a dirty old man:Because there he'd just been, fiddling with his willie and the child had just been about to put that coin straight in her mouth!
They'd go wandering off down umpteen different paths before they were finished
( "What do you mean, fiddling, exactly?"
"Well, touching it. Fishing it of his trousers and waving it about."
"Do you mean urinating?"
"Of course I mean urinating! What else on earth could I possibly mean? "
"Waving it about?"
She'd be a little sheepish now, realising that might have been a slight guilding of the lily.
"Well..." grudgingly. Then, with a twitching of the lips "You knew what I meant."
"But why should touching his penis in a strictly legitimate and necessary way make him a dirty old man?"
"Oh George!" my mother was one of the last of the breed of women who could, when the occasion presented itself, flounce. She would flounce now "you know perfectly well what I mean."and drift out of the room.
All things considered my idea of exactly what a Dirty Old Man was, or looked like, remained odd for quite some time after that, until I found out for myself.
This was the sort of thing that happened to me again and again in my childhood. Not having other siblings and moving continually meant these strange gaps and inane nonsense convo's got me into a lot of....(I wanted to say "pickles" because talking about her brings back those speech patterns. But we don't say "pickle" anymore in that sense and I'm damned if I can think of another word that carries the same meaning exactly. Saying "trouble" sounds like very un-British hyperbole. After all, I'm here, aren't I?)
Well, let's just say it led me into an interesting life. And lets further state, just for the record, that I am at last beginning to acknowledge the fact that my home-life wasn't, strictly-speaking, exactly The Norm. Nor were either of my parents.
But what I am starting to do is to connect the dots. Is this the kind of wisdom they talk about age supposedly bringing? If so, does this in turn mean I am getting old: not externally - that's a bloody given - but internally?
Does there actually come a time in all our lives when we start to see the pattern? The wonderfully intricate, crazily executed, inexorably entwined with those of other people, pattern of our lives? Is that what age gives in return for all the embarrassment and sadness - the realisation that all the bits that seemed so random and inexplicable now fit seamlessly together?
Or - and for all the aforementioned reasons, I am definitely not sure about this at all - or, bloody hell, is all that stuff supposed to come in your mid-twenties and am I actually a late bloomer?
But at least I never put money in my mouth.
Neither, it seemed did my father who, one day, finally asked the question.
"Oh George," she laughed in a-we're-all-grown-ups-here kind of way. " You know what I mean. You brought one here once."
She went back to reading her letter. My father, who was not in the habit of dragging ancient money-handling parties in off the street, looked astounded.
"What the hell....?"
"Oh, George, you know you did."
Two sentences beginning with "George". My mother was flustered. When she began to get terribly busy plumping up cushions and aligning newspapers I also knew that she considered my father was being disingenuous and forcing her to look daft. As if the fact that he had brought one home one evening wasn't burned across his consciousness until his dying day! He must, though objectively he couldn't be held responsible, subjectively have been beating himself up about introducing the snail-trail of nastiness into the Innocent garden of the Family Home ever since! And she was being made to look as though SHE was making a big deal out of it.
My father then said "Pet, I..."
So phew, that was all right then. "Pet" meant amused (I didn't learn the word "patronising" until a long time afterwards).
"George!" Whoops. Three strikes and you're out, George. Now she's angry. "That.. that.. man!" Oh yeah! The slight stutter. She is furious. He knows EXACTLY who she means!
"What man?"
"The man with the...the...doo-dah"
It was pretty much downhill from there - my father genuinely having no idea what on earth she was talking about, and my mother genuinely feeling he was being deliberately obtuse until at last, goaded, she would hiss:
"Of course you know.The one with the new thing - oh what WAS the bloody thing called? You know perfectly well, its a...a.."
Light would begin to dawn and my father would hazard "infra-red, night sighted telescopic lens for Military armaments?"
"Yes! she would crow, vindicated "That doo-dah!"
Because of all the convolutions of ever having to sit through conversations like these when querying some of my mother's more bizarre statements I, though puzzled, had learned not to enquire.
In the final instance my mother's explanation that some mild mannered business man doubled as a Dirty Old Man could be stated thus: Because when she went into the guest lav. straight after him the hand-towel was unused. This meant he hadn't washed his hands. Which in turn explained why he was a dirty old man:Because there he'd just been, fiddling with his willie and the child had just been about to put that coin straight in her mouth!
They'd go wandering off down umpteen different paths before they were finished
( "What do you mean, fiddling, exactly?"
"Well, touching it. Fishing it of his trousers and waving it about."
"Do you mean urinating?"
"Of course I mean urinating! What else on earth could I possibly mean? "
"Waving it about?"
She'd be a little sheepish now, realising that might have been a slight guilding of the lily.
"Well..." grudgingly. Then, with a twitching of the lips "You knew what I meant."
"But why should touching his penis in a strictly legitimate and necessary way make him a dirty old man?"
"Oh George!" my mother was one of the last of the breed of women who could, when the occasion presented itself, flounce. She would flounce now "you know perfectly well what I mean."and drift out of the room.
All things considered my idea of exactly what a Dirty Old Man was, or looked like, remained odd for quite some time after that, until I found out for myself.
This was the sort of thing that happened to me again and again in my childhood. Not having other siblings and moving continually meant these strange gaps and inane nonsense convo's got me into a lot of....(I wanted to say "pickles" because talking about her brings back those speech patterns. But we don't say "pickle" anymore in that sense and I'm damned if I can think of another word that carries the same meaning exactly. Saying "trouble" sounds like very un-British hyperbole. After all, I'm here, aren't I?)
Well, let's just say it led me into an interesting life. And lets further state, just for the record, that I am at last beginning to acknowledge the fact that my home-life wasn't, strictly-speaking, exactly The Norm. Nor were either of my parents.
But what I am starting to do is to connect the dots. Is this the kind of wisdom they talk about age supposedly bringing? If so, does this in turn mean I am getting old: not externally - that's a bloody given - but internally?
Does there actually come a time in all our lives when we start to see the pattern? The wonderfully intricate, crazily executed, inexorably entwined with those of other people, pattern of our lives? Is that what age gives in return for all the embarrassment and sadness - the realisation that all the bits that seemed so random and inexplicable now fit seamlessly together?
Or - and for all the aforementioned reasons, I am definitely not sure about this at all - or, bloody hell, is all that stuff supposed to come in your mid-twenties and am I actually a late bloomer?
But at least I never put money in my mouth.
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