Tag Archives: Prude

But is the ditch digger socialized?

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Twenty years ago I thought I’d like to homeschool. I tossed the decision at my husband and he immediately tossed it back in my lap.
“You’ll be doing all the work. I’ll support you, whatever you decide.”
That is pretty much the reaction we got from both sides of the family.
“Go for it. We support you.”

 

 

Cashiers at Sam’s Club, on the other hand, were confused when I had my young sons in their store in the middle of a school day.
“Is that even legal?”
My cousin, on the  board of a small Christian school, felt betrayed.
“We lose a few more families to homeschooling and we’ll need to close our doors.’

The conversations in those early years from my husband’s co-workers ran along these lines:
“Is your wife crazy?”
“A little.”
“How can she expect them to learn anything?”
“She has her teaching degree.”
“Oh.That’s OK then. But what about socialization?”

I told my husband that nothing—NOTHING—I learned in my education classes prepared me to teach at the kitchen table, but he was grateful for the degree. It kept people off his back.

Our sons got older. People would look at them with pity.
“I’m sure they benefit from one-on-one attention. But what about sports and all that stuff?”
We would respond with grace. Hopefully.
“Well, they do swimming and tennis and golf and softball and baseball with community rec, and they are part of a homeschool soccer team and basketball team and a homeschool choir and a homeschool art class.”
“Oh. That’s all right then. But what about socialization?”

Eventually I graduated all of three boys. Now people say,
“So you homeschooled all the way through? Hmmm. Brave woman. What are they doing now?”
“Well, I have one mechanical engineer and one contractor/businessman and one finishing a degree in secondary ed.” I hasten to add, “and they are all very socialized.”
Polite smiles and a little relief greet this. “Well then. That’s OK.”
I have not raised sawed-off shotgun toting social misfits after all. More importantly, they are doing jobs that MATTER. Engineering? Impressive. Entrepreneur? Admirable. English teacher-to-be? Noble.

Sometimes, just occasionally, my grace is edged out by pugnaciousness. I speculate what would happen if I answered the ‘What are they doing now?’ question as follows:
“Well, I raised a ditch digger and a garbage collector and a janitor and I am so proud of them! The ditch digger digs the best ditches because someone has to dig ditches. The garbage collector is a prince among garbage collectors and considers his work a service to his fellow man. The janitor rejoices that he has control over one little section of creation and can make it shine and function as it was meant to.”

My puzzled imaginary questioner says:
“But I’ve met your boys. They seem more…gifted than that.”
“Oh, they are! They are gifted with grace. With godliness. With humility. They have the gift of caring about their coworkers and neighbors and family and friends and complete strangers.”

The hypothetical interrogator continues, slowly now, because I am apparently a bit dim:
“Yes, of course. But I meant talents that can be used to make society better. To be productive.”

“You mean”— (my internal combatant is getting snotty here)— “talent is only measured by its monetary compensation? One’s talent must be bartered for a fat paycheck? A prestigious job? Both? Who says our gifts are given to make us wealthy, or even to change the world? Can’t our gifts just enrich our little sphere and whoever is in it? Can’t our talents help us do any job better, no matter how menial our culture considers it?
“My boys aren’t defined as only a ditch digger and a garbage collector and a janitor. They know that every shovel they lift and every trash bag they grab and every toilet they clean is part of Kingdom work because they do it to honor their King and serve their fellow man.”

Of course, God doesn’t allow me to remain contrary and truculent, even in my imagination, for long. We don’t live in a society that completely grasps homeschooling.
That is OK.
It isn’t OK that homeschooling parents—any parents—believe they are only successful if they raise ‘successful’ children.

In the end it isn’t the power or prestige or the paycheck that imbues any profession with nobility.
A truly successful job is the one that serves others and honors God and is done with all one’s might.

And it never hurts to throw in a smidgen of socialization.

Wildely Tart

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SONY DSC“Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”
― Oscar Wilde

If dear Oscar could see art these days he may have added to the above little aphorism:
“and heaven help us all.’

Let’s start with an assumption: TV is a 21st century artform. (Work with me here)
And let’s, given the 21st century’s fascination with word smash-ups,
call this merger of
TV and art
‘Tart.’
(For purposes of this article we refer almost solely to the manifestation of Tart called ‘dramas’ since comedies make few attempts at portraying life realistically and ‘reality shows’ are so divorced from reality as to be classified ‘science fiction.’

Life, imitating Tart, would mean;

-the most dangerous job, bar none, is security guard. When, on TV cop shows, do security guards ever not get killed?

-when thieves or snoops sneak into a house, they will find it perfectly tidy, bed made, dishes done, paperwork filed and fridge shelves polished to a Turtle Wax glow.

-anyone trying to hack into someone’s (crumb-free) computer will need no more than 5 tries to figure out the private password.

-law enforcement comes to a house looking for a suspect/witness/person of interest. After 2 quick knocks and an ‘Anybody home?’ bellow they will enter via the (usually) unlatched door. And they never, ever, consider that the suspect/witness/P.O.I could be in the loo/lavatory/restroom.

-once in, there is a 98% chance they will find a dead body. Perhaps the loo was the best place to be after all.

-those desiring  a dangerous job but preferring to avoid the 100% mortality rate of the security guard profession, might consider law enforcement. Guaranteed job security (unless your network contract is up) and thrills that come from being shot, concussed, bruised, kidnapped, and compromised. Applicants should have a deep secret in their past and/or family member(s) killed by someone evil. Must be willing to devote all free time and several seasons tracking this evildoer.

-great coworkers abound, who love each other so much that they spend major holidays with each other instead of extended family.

-serial killers are more common than mudhens.

-those leaping from 2nd/3rd story windows to escape any given serial killer will land in the back of a dump truck filled with something soft and buoyant. When this cushiony substance is impacted by the escapee’s weight, a chain of dump truck events is triggered. These include the ignition turning over, gears being engaged and the unsuspecting truck chauffeuring the escapee to safety.

-cars (built according to Tart specifications) will explode on impact. Any impact.

-cars (built according to Tart specifications) self-steer. As miles of scenery whirl merrily past, the driver can chat, face-to face, with the front seat passenger.

-victim-types will go alone to a deserted spot to meet an avowed enemy, this in spite of the decades of disastrous consequences experienced by predecessor (and deceased) Tarts who did the same thing.

-anyone put in the witness protection program because something that shouldn’t have been seen was seen, will have a teenage offspring along. The offspring WILL climb out a window to meet friends and endanger themselves, the family, and national security.

-innocent types, on the run from gangsters in a city of 5 million people, will bump into them when turning a corner.

-a sports team of out of shape, clueless non-athletic, lovable quirky loser-types, in less than one season, will improve to the extent that they will beat the buff, haughty, talented jockkids who have been training in this sport since the cradle.

-pregnant women will deliver a spotless 15 pound infant after 30 minutes of labor, anywhere but a hospital and by anyone but a doctor.

And finally, because Tart is where we gain wisdom and comfort and joy—

-when one is in the midst of deepest despair and self-doubt and failure, a wise sage will offer those remarkable, magical, those life-changing words, (or what we like to call the
SweetTart):
“I believe in you. Now you must believe in yourself.”

Too bad the tragic Oscar Wilde didn’t have Tart around to imitate.

Writing without widgets

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falling_rocks
I am a rock. I am an island.
(Simon and Garfunkel ‘I am a Rock’)

That is me. An rock of oblivion and an island of inflexibility
standing firm in the raging torrent of social media.
Here’s the thing about rocks and islands.
We don’t stand firm because we are strong
and steadfast and resolute.
We are stuck.
Have you ever seen an island pull up stakes to follow the crowd?
And rocks. Not known for trendiness.

Several years ago I thought it would be fun to start writing a book.
Once I got some impetus going I thought it would be fun to finish it.
What could be more fun than finishing a book?
Submitting it to a publisher!
Oh! Oh!
And then getting it published!
Having family and friends buy it!
This rolling stone was gathering no moss.

Until, in a parallel universe—the actual one—I came to realize that the rolling, moss-shedding author
was a temporary illusion.
The real me is the unmoving rocky island with roots to the center of the earth.
An atoll (there are very few synonyms for ‘island’) who is learning that writers eventually  run out of family and friends to purchase one’s book. The glorious ‘I am a published author’ ride
hits the rocks.
And one needs to
PROMOTE.

Promotion is double horror for a rock and an island:
One needs to be confident and outgoing. Creative and fearless. Rocks are not known for these qualities. We prefer to blend into the scenery and have people sit on us.

And one needs to have moved from newspaper interviews/genteel bookstore readings and into Twitter feeds and author pages and likes on Facebook and blog widgets and avatars and all the things islands just can’t cope with.

But the world of social media and self-promotion is lapping at my rocky shores.
I’ve cajoled and convinced everyone I know to buy my book and I can’t make new friends or relatives fast enough to generate glowing book sales.

So I’ll do what I can to appear that I am busily promoting, without actually moving.

*************
I wrote a book folks! A suspense/romance mystery!
It’s called ‘Winter Watch’ and my real name (really) is Anita Klumpers
Publisher: Prism Book Group
Available in paperback and ebook from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords
and various other online sites.
*************
There.
That didn’t hurt a bit.
But my editor is heading this way with a few sticks of TNT.
My island days are numbered.
Look for bits and pieces of my rocky self bobbing along in the social media world,
gasping out tweets and hanging onto a widget for dear life.

GOING GRAY

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SONY DSCPeople of a certain delicate age, we decided last time out, don’t really forget stuff. We just misplace it for a time.
This week we face another conundrum. Why do decisions that were once clear-cut now have more angles than a 10th grade geometry book? When did snap judgements expand to Supreme Court-deliberation length?
Why does a final, rock solid decision continuously elude me?

Something else is going on here. It isn’t only the sheer amount of stuff shoved into my memory bank.
It’s the filter.
My filter assigns virtue to incoming information.
Like my hair, the filter is getting gray and brittle.
Another scourge of middle age.

My grandsons are infants. The world is white to them. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, centers around their needs. A nuclear explosion could erupt in the next town and they would demand a diaper change. Naptime can’t wait for important phone calls to end and they really have no use for Mommy’s migraine when their little tummies rumble. The world is straightforward and monochrome. It is responsible for making them happy and keeping them safe. All is white.

By the time these little ones hit their teenage stride something remarkable will have happened.
Another color, another dimension, will have gradually crept into their ‘me’ world.
Black takes its place along white.
Now, while still wanting to fulfill their own pleasures and needs, these blossoming youth comprehend that some things are bad. They will begin assessing data and assigning colors.
Is this good or bad? Black or is it white?
Decision making over all that info takes more time. They no longer see just a white spotlight focussed on their own needs. They see the dark of wrong, bad, evil. Their brains have more information to process. Not only are they working with more experience to apply to the info. They have to make a judgement call.
Black or white?
Life isn’t entirely simple.
But it still is sort of simple. Rarely in the idealistic absolutes of youth do black and white puddle together into ambiguity.

Here at the tail end of middle age, black and white are no longer the primary colors used by my brain to file information, make an application and deduce, “This is bad. That is good. She is evil. He is pure. Do this. Don’t do that.”

Grayness has set in. So few of the decisions are easy. Implications abound. While some actions I observe are overtly evil or obviously good, I have learned (oh, blast that experience!) that quick verdicts are not always easy to make.
Judgment calls require the sifting of acquired wisdom and accumulated experience and hits and misses. We are so much slower than we used to be because our filter has so much more to sort. Lean chicken or marbled steak? Spankings or time outs? Liberal Republican or conservative Democrat? What does ‘in the world but not of it’ look like? Will the shabby man begging for spare change spend it on liquor? How can one tired finite mind figure this all out?

Humans and situations and issues are complex. People can do bad things with good intentions. Charitable actions can have self-serving motives, honorable nations can fight dishonorable wars and every story doesn’t have 2 sides. It might have a dozen.

There are absolutes in the world. I respect them but understand that fallible humans have trouble living those absolutes absolutely. I respect justice but crave mercy. The gray filter of my mind has seen the dark recesses of my heart struggle with the brightness of Good. It reminds me how foolhardy and hypocritical a rush to judgement can be.
At the same time my brittle, tired filter longs for the day when I won’t have to analyze, appraise and critique myself or others or issues or events.

Someday, my gray filter won’t be needed. All will be White. And I’ll have eternity to enjoy the chicken AND the steak.

Somalia is the new Bangladesh

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As children grow and develop their humor sense, they learn the delights of shared ridicule. If we’ve raised our children right they won’t ridicule peers or authority figures or those different from them. They’ll mock us.

A gaggle of post-littles/pre-teens guffaw as they cross eyes and loll out tongues.
“Your mom says your face will stay that way? Mine does too!”
Or, “Does your mom ever say, “If your friends were all jumping off a cliff would you?”
And then one will chime in,
“My folks always say, ‘wait till you have kids of your own.’”
At this point they all laugh uproariously. Kids of their own?
That day is, like, a million years in the future.

And then comes the inevitable: “My mom always says, ‘Eat your vegetables! There are starving children in Somalia!’ So I say, ‘If they want my Lima beans so bad they can have them!’”

Some moms might sub in India or the Sudan or North Korea.
But the Momism is the same. When I was growing up the children in Bangladesh were starving.
I wondered how eating my liver and Brussels Sprouts would fill their stomachs.

It wouldn’t. So why don’t moms can this ridiculous phrase? Its been around longer than I have.
As long as America has had so much food that almost half of it goes to waste.
As long as children see buffet lines with more options than their phones have apps.
As long as first world children have never known the gnawing ache of hunger.
Not temporary hunger pangs, but the
agonizing starvation that distends little tummies while shrinking little bodies to loosely fleshed skeletons.

As long as our children can pile food on their plates and after a few bites toss the rest, words about starving children have little impact.

Moms have a lot to deal with. Children have food preferences and sensitivities. Many moms need to keep kids safe from allergens and pesticides. We don’t want our kids falling into eating disorders so we don’t tell them to clean their plates.

We have so much food that sometimes we view it as an enemy instead of realizing how precious it is.
We need to learn ourselves and teach our children that full tables and refrigerators and pantries aren’t our right, but a blessing and privilege.

Let’s exercise our imaginations. Picture one of those little ones from India or Somalia or somewhere in our own city who doesn’t have enough to eat. Imagine them watching us scrape good food into the trash. Imagine a child—who washed dung from seeds for something to eat—sees us turn up fussy noses at meat, potatoes and 2 kinds of vegetables.
Or liver and Brussels Sprouts.

I, too, need pictures of those empty babies with the puzzled eyes
next time I am too lazy to heat up leftovers and order out for pizza. Or when I wait till the food in the fridge turns green and I can just dump it.

“You have so much,” the hollow voices say. “Please, respect it. We do.”

Another Momism: We don’t know what we have till its gone.

An attitude of humble gratefulness and stewardship can grow and spill out. It creates empathy which creates people who not only enjoy the blessing of food, but share it.

Lord, this Thanksgiving, let me be thankfully aware. Let me be alert for those who don’t have tables groaning with provision. Let me be a steward of this bounty. And please, let me partake with gratitude and amazement.

‘I’ is Understood

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Prudes are often self-appointed grammar nannies, (making sure apostrophes are tucked in the cozy correct spots and participles don’t dangle dangerously.) The Tuesday Prude, however, hated diagramming sentences in school. Maybe it looked too much like math. When it was time to explore the beautiful world of grammar with our home schooled prudlings, we choose a curriculum that didn’t technically require diagramming.

It was a good program and they learned enough not to embarrass me. The closest they came to diagramming was the requirement to pull prepositional phrases from each sentence and label the leftovers:  subject, verb, direct object etc.
Occasionally an imperative sentence reared its imperious head:
Shut the door.
Stop strangling your brother.
Rescue that dangling participle.

Where is the subject in the above sentences? We learned that the imperative is addressed to ‘you’.
‘You’ shut the door.
‘You’ stop strangling your brother.
‘You’. . .
You get the picture.
Their job was to label the subject as ‘You is understood’.
It was sort of fun to say. ‘You is understood.’

The fun didn’t stop when my boys finished school. There is a new way to use this rule.

It keeps the world from knowing just what an egomaniac I (aka The Tuesday Prude) am.

One of the first rules a good writer learns: avoid beginning every sentence with the word
I.
Even in a blog, even on a Facebook status, or personal communication—start too many sentences with ‘I’ and readers get the notion that the writer is self-centered.

My readers would be right.

Ever hear the phrase ‘She thinks the world revolves around her’? Try as I will to convince myself that the world actually revolves on a tipsy axis, my id, ego and superego all argue the opposite. In the world of the self-centered I am firmly in the middle.

Narcissism, however, wears thin with readers. As a budding writer I don’t want to alienate readers. They want to believe I am interested in them, and I am. Truly I am, but this nasty little core of me wants to make sure no one bumps me from Centerville. Because no matter how much evidence there is to the contrary, deep down in my fascinating self is the idea that everyone else should be captivated with ME.

So I develop strategies to hide my egomania. Look back and you’ll discover the sneaky ways I wrote an entire post about ME without once starting a sentence with ‘I’. And I didn’t even hide behind The Tuesday Prude.
The Tuesday Prude, while a great 3rd person subject to hide behind, doesn’t always address the issues at hand.
All this means that sometimes, unfortunately, it is almost impossible to keep the
I-word anywhere but the engine part of a sentence.

That is where my ‘You is understood’ training comes in handy.

Instead of writing
“I am trying to avoid starting sentences with ‘I’”,
I drop the ‘I’ at the beginning of the sentence and it becomes a friendly, informal
‘Trying to avoid…”

The ‘I’ is understood but it sits modestly out of the reader’s line of vision, understanding that I am really the subject of me but not trumpeting the fact.

It gets easier:
“Loving this organic casserole that just came out of the oven!”
“Going to buy a new pair of jeans in a smaller size!”
“Just enjoying the cutest grandbabies on earth!”

All the above are just underhanded ways of saying:
“Wondering if everyone heard that the earth’s axis shifted? Pretty sure they know who it rotates around now!!”

The Lecture Lance

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Readers of The Tuesday Prude may come here for real-life advice that addresses real-life issues. (‘What if my child’s eyes glaze over during lectures?’ or ‘Would this be a good time to lecture those in Washington DC who should KNOW BETTER?’) 
Any resemblance to actual expert advice by weapons tacticians, child psychologists or purveyors of world peace is purely accidental.
We want to educate you in the ways and means of prudishness and would love to build our ranks. But please take most of what we say with a grain of salt. Or possibly the entirety of Salt Lake City.

We wrap up our lengthy examination of Prude Weapons with the most potent of arms.
The Lecture Lance (LL)
Today we practice
 How to Use it.
We learned to brandish it only on those over whom you wield authority, or those who should KNOW BETTER. For our purposes we’ll call them Temporary Combatants (TC’s).
But don’t let its limited range deter you from becoming an expert in its use. A single human can and does make a difference. One person ( I’m going to invent something. I think I’ll call it Facebook) can influence one other person (and I’ll ask so-and-so to be my friend) and that person influences someone else (Hey! I can be friends with people I never met!) and soon the entire known universe is connected via status updates.
The same principle applies to The Lecture Lance. If everyone (E) uses one (1)  powerful lecture on each temporary combatant (TC) in their sphere of authority, all of civilization will soon feel the prickles of the it-has-to-hurt-to-make-a-difference Lecture Lance.

Are you skeptical of the LL’s power? We provide an algebraic proof:
If
E (1L x TC) = E (LTC)
And
the sum of E(LTC)  lectures everyTemporary Combatant in THEIR spheres (ETCS),
then:
ETC (1L x TC) = (ETCS) x infinity
which equals—well—you do the math.
We can’t. That’s why we are humor writers.

Remember. The Lecture Lance is your most powerful assault weapon. Drill daily prior to employing it in field combat.

Before a maneuver,  check that every part of the lecture is functioning.
Make sure to include:
–Premise:  how fortunate the temporary combatant is to have a parent/authority figure who cares enough to lecture
– Examples: how if ________ (ie. Attila the Hun / the neighbor’s drug dealing son / reprobate of your choice) had had an authority figure who cared enough to lecture, he wouldn’t have _______ (died from heavy drinking after battling Rome / currently be sitting in a Turkish prison waiting to find out which, if any, of his limbs the judge will allow him to retain / consequence of your choice)
–Persistence:  several reiterations of “Don’t sigh and/or roll your eyes. It just makes the lecture longer”
–Application: a recap of the TC’s lapse from good behavior and expectations for future improvement
– Binding up the Wounds: fervent, though stern, affirmations of the long-suffering lecturer’s love and/or concern for the temporary combatant

Train diligently, and you can survive and even thrive in the heat of battle. Your can stand firm when the TC’s eyes roll backward and pause under the eyelids long enough to collect an opaque glaze. You won’t lose your focus in the face of sighs deep enough to suck all oxygen from the room.  And you won’t EVER let anyone tell you that you are nagging. Nagging is a battering ram poisoned with nerve gas. Instead of heightening the moral sense, nagging numbs it.

The Lecture Lance is a prude’s refined, humane, and effective means to prick the conscience of our temporary combatants and prod them back onto the path of good behavior. Our dream is that some day, history will point to prudes and say: Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.*

*Winston Churchill, a man who knew the power of words.

Passive-Aggressive Prudes: Let’s not get Physical

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Before we get into the finer points of how to brandish the prude version of a battering ram, let’s take a little side street to visit some personal Tuesday Prude history. We’ll pull back the curtain of personal and familial past and discover why we here have chosen not to engage in fisticuffs to defend and promote our belief system.

When offspring of the Tuesday Prude were small, and driven to various manifestations of their original sin,  the first disciplinary inclination would be to patch their pookets.
According to the Prude Lexicon:
Patchin’ (verb): Application of corporal punishment to a fleshy area of a youngster’s backside.
“If you run into the street again you will get a patchin’ on your pooket.”
Pooket (noun): The well-padded backside of a child. The part of the anatomy required for sitting.
“Of course your pooket hurts. You jumped off the swing and landed on it.”

Although not opposed to corporal punishment, we here at The Tuesday Prude tired of nursing  stinging hands after each patchin’ whilst Prudlings  chuckled and announced that their rock-like pookets hadn’t even FELT the patchin.

A little further back in history reveals where we began to develop our passive-aggressive battering ram.  One particular mother of one particular Prude was an advocate of patchins.  This Prude’s father infinitely preferred The Lecture. (sneak preview-The Lecture IS a prude’s most potent weapon). Perhaps he, also, was a victim of delicate palms.  This particular Prude was only in the embryonic stage of prudish development, and often exhibited infestations of original sin. Her father would sit her down, look her in the eye, and explain in five-to-ten thousand words why that particular sin was wrong. He would add details regarding to whom the wrong was done and their consequent sadness, the sadness of the young Prude’s parents, pastor and the Lord, and why continuation in this sin would only lead to bigger, deeper, stronger, and more serious lectures.

This Prude’s mother, unable to take any more, would exclaim in exasperation: ‘Give her a patchin’ for Pete’s sake and get it over with!”  The Prude heartily concurred.  But her father, determined not to skimp on discipline, and preferring passive-aggressive to physical, would bring the lecture to its full development, complete with a summary paragraph and restatement of his thesis.

The Tuesday Prude has been impressed by the Power of the Lecture. We are only beginning to learn how potent, how life-changing, and how naughtiness-overcoming it can be when wielded correctly.
Please, we beg you, if you haven’t been trained in the use of this weapon, don’t go ramming it willy-nilly! The chance for irreparable harm is great.
Come back next week please. You’ll enter a novice and leave a proud, card-carrying Lecturer.

WEAPONS OF CRASS DESTRUCTION

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The Tuesday Prude has spent the last several weeks on various military maneuvers and left you to fight your own prudish battles. You could either cower behind your Squirm shield, or brandish a few small-scale weapons. That is all we’ve provided you with to date, and there is only so much damage a ‘tsk’ can inflict.

It’s a war out there folks. We can’t put this off any longer.
Prudes from all over the world need to unite under the banner of propriety. We must contend with objectionable language, messy morals and churlish misbehavior.
A stern look just won’t cut it.

The offensive weapons we introduce over the course of the next few weeks are not for the faint of heart. One needs training and a healthy sense of respect for their power.

These big guns are not finesse items. They don’t have the subtlety of a defensive blush, the elegance of the ‘tsk’.
The first item in our heavy artillery is especially dangerous. Discharge it without proper caution and it could backfire on you.

Have you ever heard of the medieval blunt instrument called a ‘flail’? Picture a Styrofoam ball, maybe softball size, covered with chopsticks, chained to a child-size cricket bat.
The flail was wielded by gripping the cricket bat and swinging the chopstick embedded  ball at your opponent. Oh, did we mention the entire contraption is made of solid iron?

The obvious danger comes if you miss your adversary and the flail whacks you in the face.

The Finger Wag  (aka Finger Point) is the prudes’ equivalent of the flail.

Like the flail, it loses potency when the offending party isn’t within arm’s length.
It can stop a skirmish in its tracks when used correctly, but could come back to bite you.

Usually the Wag is pulled out when the Look and repeated ‘Do you really want to…?” have failed.
Your teenager lost his/her license.
You’d previously brandished only small weapons. You’ve reminded him/her that posted speed limits are not merely suggestions. To no avail.
Now your trigger finger is getting itchy.
You wag it in front of your licenseless offspring’s nose.
The child knows he/she is in for it. That potent pointer finger carries the weight of not only disapproval, but CONSEQUENCES.

What about the aforementioned danger to the one flourishing it?
Remember. Three fingers are wagging back at you.

That’s right. If your son/daughter knows you sweet-talked your way out of a speeding ticket last month, your Finger Wag could miss the youngster and wallop you.

You don’t need to be perfect to point out the errors of others and impose necessary sanctions. The danger comes when you wag a finger at others while living hypocritically.
This is irresponsible use of dangerous artillery.

A final note of caution.
Although any prude is licensed to use the Finger Wag, there are restrictions on whom it can be employed.
It is not a good idea to point at
-your parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents
-your clergyman
-your spouse
-law enforcement

You are pretty much limited to your progeny, your students, impish children on the playground, and bullies. In dire circumstances however, you may employ it on anyone in the forbidden categories  partaking of behavior that will damage another human or defenseless animal.

This prude version of a flail functions to:
-stop bad behavior in its tracks
-prevent dangerous future hostilities.

It has great power, fellow prudes.
Use it wisely.

All we are saying, (la la) is give civility a chance

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The Tuesday Prude has a daydream.
A dream in which thousands of people from all walks of life, sporting skin tones from freckly pink to glorious midnight, join for the next big March on Washington.
We won’t come together because we agree on everything. As a matter of fact, we agree on very little.
The Tuesday Prude brings a bevy of priggish types who propound the glories of modesty and genteel understatement, (body parts consist of ‘chestal regions’ and ‘hindquarters’, babies come about via procreation, couples in the throes of warm emotions engage in smooching). Our mission also promotes good manners and proper semi-colon use.
We meet up with the ‘America Gets Nekkid’ folks, who arrive clad only in sturdy walking shoes and an admirable sets of goosebumps.

The ‘Call a Spade a Spade ’ Society are in D.C. too. They organized several years ago to convince the world how archaic and unnecessary euphemisms have become.
Grammar Anarchists trickle in. Known best by their slogan ‘For all intensive purposes; we could care less’ they champion for, among other linguistic improprieties, a participle’s right to dangle.
More assemblages join us, like a small, unnamed but vocal group who hold etiquette responsible for the world’s inequities.

What, in The Tuesday Prude’s dream could bind such a disparate group?  What do we have in common?

A desire for civility.

So we come together, holding firmly to individual convictions, but demonstrating jointly for a fundamental cause.
This is the Civility Rights March.

The Tuesday Prude’s pipe dream continues. Maybe, before even arriving at our nation’s capital, everyone who thinks civility has for too long been trampled agrees to the following:

CIVILITY STATEMENT OF RIGHTS
1) We will not mock, scorn, or call those with opposing viewpoints nasty names.
2) Interruptions, speaking out of turn and out-shouting others is not tolerated. We all have a chance to express opinions, but only while holding the Stick of Civility.
3) We do not make our opponent appear foolish, or take remarks out of context.
4) Under no circumstances, no matter how major our differences, do we  engage in fisticuffs.
5) We vow to use the proper facilities for dealing with bodily functions, leave said facilities looking better than when we came in, and inform management if facilities require attention.
6) We will not litter.
7) We promise to guard the above rights of civility via the use of civility against any and all who might come and try to undermine the rights of civility.

This is our daydream. Someday, demonstrators will come together to actually demonstrate what civility looks like…
Perhaps we overhear a Grammar Anarchist say: “Ain’t nobody going to tell me apostrophes aren’t for plural nouns.” Instead of mocking the extensive overuse of negatives (“So someone IS going to tell you how to use apostrophes?”) we tell them we enjoy their use of the vernacular ‘ain’t’ and any time the language subversive wants to discuss punctuation more fully we are ready and willing. They thank us and admit to occasional appreciation of subject/verb agreement.

Maybe a member of the ‘Call a Spade a Spade’ Society hears a male prude (they do exist) announce, “‘In the future I want to see a woman’s chestal region treated with the same dignity accorded to the hand that shakes the Queen’s: it will be fully covered.”
The pro-CASAS resists, in the interests of civility, taking his statement out of context to make him appear foolish or hypocritical.  (“I want to see a woman’s chestal region.”)

The most rabid of full-body coverage zealots realizes that even anti-clothing extremists get cold. While looking the au natural directly in the eye (and only in the eye) the super-modest type won’t say, “Serves you right.” Instead she offers a blanket for the birthday-suit clad nonconformist to ward off the chill. (“No, I don’t need it back when the temps warm up. Really, you keep it.”)  The personage in the all-together, recognizing the prudish-types’ sensibilities, willingly covers public seating areas with newspapers or napkins before settling down.

And even though the throw-off-the-yoke-of-etiquette people believe salad greens stuck in the teeth or dangling dried nasal secretions are symbols of liberation, they know they haven’t won over the entire world to their perspective. Therefore, upon seeing a dab of marinara sauce on the chin of a dainty etiquette-lover, our napkin-hater refrains from outward rejoicing and tactfully points it out.

Cleanliness, while not akin to godliness, certainly lifts the spirits. We all dash about emptying trash cans and making sure every facility has toilet paper and running water.

Protests seldom go well. The 60’s antiwar demonstrations always drew a crowd who defended America’s policies. Bitter recriminations erupted from both camps. Those who picket abortion clinics in turn are picketed by their polar opposites and the Occupy Anything people are met by vocally indignant Go Home Now and Get a Job groups.
They all employ their constitutional right to protest. Sadly, many assume this means they also have the right to scream and belittle and deface what isn’t theirs.

But at our Civility Rights March, any misguided prudes who come planning to humiliate our opposition will find themselves politely shushed. We won’t tolerate name calling, finger pointing, or twisted words.
Disagree with us, or disagree with those we disagree with.
Do so in an uncivil manner and we will inform you how we plan to defend the rights of civility.  And then we will courteously point out the little piece of spinach in your teeth.