“The wooden hairbrush has two practical uses, the bristle side to be used on her silken locks, and the harsh, wooden side to be used on her shapely seat of learning”
Thank you for all the encouragement. I have high hopes that Coffee will stay at its current address. I have joined Website Builder and will explore the site this weekend. I wonder if it has a view of the water.
Harper Lee has died. Her To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my favorite of all novels. I have reread it and The Catcher in the Rye during various stages of my life. I always find something I missed, and I learn new things mostly about people. Running around in my memory drawers are quotes which made such sense they stuck. “There’s only one kind of folks, folks,” is Scout’s view. Maybe it should be our view, all of our views.
When I was a kid, I was a wise ass. I know you find that difficult to believe, and you’re all probably shaking your heads in disbelief as you read this. It was my contention back then that my remarks, the ones which caused trouble, were involuntary. They just flew out of my mouth skipping my brain which might have cautioned me. My father was usually the receiver of my sass. He was an easy target who failed to see the humor. Mostly I just got yelled at and sent to my room. My father was, as I’ve mentioned before, a yeller, but I had learned at an early age how to ignore him but look contrite as if I were listening with the whole of me. Being set to my room was a gift, but he didn’t know that. It would be my main punishment until my teens when he’d ground me. Luckily he felt guilty and usually ungrounded me after a lecture, a small price to pay for the return of freedom.
My mother started out a yeller, but she could never carry it off. She made us laugh, but we pretended to accept the seriousness of her rant. One time, the last time we laughed, she made an unexpected return and caught us. That changed her whole approach. She’d throw her slipper and make us bring it back. We did, but reluctantly, knowing that her slipper could become a weapon in her hands. Once she threw a book at me, a dictionary, but I ducked. She got mad and left. I almost wanted to stop her and tell her never to leave as that was the worst approach to discipline. My advice to her would have been to escalate.
We weren’t really bad kids. We were mostly annoying. We’d yell and fight with each other, and that drove my mother crazy. She’d tell us to get out of the house before she did something for which she’d be sorry. We never believed her as my mother was easy going, but we left anyway. We’d grab our bikes and go off riding. It was my favorite punishment.
Explore posts in the same categories: MusingsTags: discipline, go to your room, grounded, Harper Lee, sass, Scout, throw things, throwing things, To Kill a Mockingbird, wise ass, yeller
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
February 19, 2016 at 1:48 pm
You batter have a few places ready to restart on since You know they’ll catch You sooner or later 🙂 Just give us the next address when You feel it might be time to move 🙂 I would go for a sir´te with a view of the water 🙂
I haven’t read any book written by her but I’ve always wondered what How to kill a Mockingbird is about. Heard lots about it but not enough to get curious enough to get it.
Have a great day!
Christer.
February 19, 2016 at 3:46 pm
Christer,
I will start rebuilding Coffee at another spot this weekend. I have had 3 e-mails from one place so that they pay so much attention makes them look good.
It is an amazing book and so is the movie. It is one of the best adaptations of a novel to a movie. Gregory Peck won and Oscar.
Have a great weekend!
February 19, 2016 at 2:58 pm
Although Harper Lee passed away today her one novel will live on and be enjoyed by future generations. I hope that readers in the future will be surprised and shocked at the horrible attitudes of white people towards blacks who lived through the segregation era in the Jim Crow south. It’s been many years since I read the book, but I have seen the movie several times. Gregory Peck deserved the Oscar for his role as Atticus Finch.
Have you read her forgotten book, Go Set a Watchman? I haven’t read it but some people think that it was the first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird.
When I was a kid I too was a wise guy with a sarcastic mouth. My father traveled most weeks from Monday through Friday night and I knew I could get away with my remarks through about Wedensday, My mother was a yeller and she also through shoes as she yelled, “just wait until your father get’s home”. By Friday she had usually forgotten what I had done or said that angered her to throw shoes at me, my father, on the other hand, was very calm and would take off his belt so I would run around the house with him in hot pursuit holding up his pants in one hand and swinging his belt in the other, I think all kids just want to get their parents attention by what ever means possible. My son has inherited my wise-ass mouth and ornery behavior.
Thanks for reminding me that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Today the temperature should almost reach 80 degrees under clear skies.
February 19, 2016 at 4:08 pm
Bob,
Mockingbird will most definitely live on. I haven’t read the second book. It is a continuation of Mockingbird and was not well received because of a huge change in Atticus. I didn’t want to read about what had happened to Atticus.
I was never ornery, but I did have an answer for everything. My father was around the whole week until my junior year in high school when he was transferred to Maine and was home only on weekends. My mother was a bit frazzled.
We didn’t watch our parents attention-better to be unnoticed.
It was 36˚ when Gracie and I went riding around.
February 19, 2016 at 3:25 pm
Website Builder? Quick search, ambiguous results, which one? Just curious.
My personal KTCC related playlist for today:
King Crimson – Indiscipline (live)
Taj Mahal & Etta James – Mockingbird
Joy of Cooking – Mockingbird (live)
Yesterday’s choices:
Neil Young – Don’t let it bring you down
Sister Rosetta Sharpe – Can’t no grave hold my body down
Buffy Sainte-Marie – They gotta quit kickin my dawg around
I know, just 2 songs on weekdays, minor anarchy in the EU 🙂
February 19, 2016 at 3:40 pm
Birgit,
websitebuilder.com is the sire but I haven’t explored much yet.
Okay-I’m loving your playlist, especially Mockingbird with Taj Mahal and Etta. I could choose any of those singers-you know me well!!
Thanks!
February 19, 2016 at 4:09 pm
Never read ‘Mockingbird.’ Saw the movie. Peck was good in it. Depressing as hell. Never read ‘Catcher,’ either. Started to, found it boring – read ‘A Canticle for Leibowitz’ instead – then ‘Catch-22’ … and, lest we forget, ‘1984.’ One of the lesser-known writers I’ve enjoyed is John Faulkner (William’s brother), who (imho) has a fantastic ear for dialect and expresses it perfectly through his writing. Read his ‘Cabin Road’ if you can find a copy. Great story about the Mississippi ‘back beats’ (no, nothing to do with music) in the ‘30s and ‘40s.
You? A wiseass? Say it ain’t so, Joe! We may be related, y’ know. I was probably missing the same filter you were missing. I said stuff ’cuz I thought stuff, and if y’ think stuff, y’ say stuff. Right? Right. At least that’s the way it seemed when I was a kid. Later, when I was a forced attendee at the Government Indoctrination Center and Forced Socialization Camp (grade school), I was instructed in the ‘Way of the Filter.’ That clamped down on my ‘run-off-at-the-mouth’-ishness. Finally I reached my 40s and re-thought things I’d learnt along the way and decided I neither wanted nor liked Society’s damned Filter – so I took it off. It’s so much easier to breathe without that thing in the way.
Like you say, we weren’t what could be called ‘bad kids’ – we, too, were probably annoying as hell at times, but not all the time. Occasionally we were downright likable. ‘Cute’ and ‘cuddly’ could probably also be used, but I’m not gonna be the one to employ those descriptors.
February 19, 2016 at 4:20 pm
Richard,
I have also read Canticle and Catch 22, but Mockingbird will always be among my favorites. Gregory Peck was Atticus, no doubt about it. He won a well-deserved Oscar. Catcher made me laugh in so many places. I was 14 when I read it and it resonated.
I was never in trouble in school. I knew the boundaries the nuns had set and stayed within the lines. I could get out of trouble at home but not at school. Our classes were huge with 35-40 students per class. There were never problems, and we all were able to learn.
In college I was my sassy self.
I don’t think I’d be in that cute and cuddly group. My sisters maybe, but not me.
February 19, 2016 at 6:28 pm
Kat, are we able to drop in a YouTube without The Spanish Inquisition ? (Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition)
My music dates today were Bob, Richard Hawley, Los Lobos and Cliff. Just the way it is
February 19, 2016 at 6:49 pm
MDH,
We can use YouTube I think. Once and a while I follow a link from a blog only to find the video has been taken down. None have gone missing from Coffee but that may be because they are usually in comments.
February 20, 2016 at 12:02 am
Kat …
Considering the letter you just received, this article on the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s site may be of more than passing interest … and another opportunity for us all to say ‘Thanks, Obama!’ …
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/02/sneaky-change-tpp-drastically-extends-criminal-penalties
February 20, 2016 at 11:32 am
Richard,
Many countries are to blame, not just the US.
https://www.eff.org/issues/tpp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership
We know that many Eastern countries pirate music among other things including medicine from the US. This trade agreement lists the penalties for doing so. Notice China has not signed it.
February 20, 2016 at 2:54 am
I’m sending you lots of love Kat, website problems & dental surgery in quick succession, that’s just too much to deal with!
xxx
February 20, 2016 at 11:33 am
Thanks, Annie
I was totally bummed when I got that e-mail. The surgery was nothing in comparison.