Stuff My Dad Always Says or, This One’s a Little Sappy

Tags

advice, fathers

My Sunday school teacher opened this week by asking for phrases or proverbs that our parents, professors, mentors, or other respected figures “always said.”  It got me thinking, and I spent the remainder of the afternoon being periodically reminded of my father’s words of wisdom over the past twenty-one years, which I now pass on to you:

 

1.  It’ll be better before you’re married.

This one’s a classic, used for scrapes, bruises, and crushed expectations.  Thus far and for the foreseeable future, it’s been true.

 

2.  There are two kinds of offense:  offense given, and offense taken.

This is one piece of Dad’s advice that I shrugged off at the time—mostly because he liked to impart wisdom during my morning Cocoa Puffs, an inviolate time in my daily routine (I took offense)—but have come to appreciate more and more as I encounter people and situations.  There seems to be more offense taken than given in the world, considering the number of angry people protesting and suing and writing angry songs against girlfriends, wealth, and the establishment.  I support justice and egalitarianism:  I don’t support picking fights because you’re thin-skinned.

 

3.  There are four types of male/female relationships precedented in the Bible:  husband/wife, betrothed, brother/sister, and parent/child.

This one is rather hotly contested, mostly in that it lumps friendships into the brother/sister category and excludes dating altogether (My dad prefers the courtship camp.  Or maybe arranged marriages; I never asked.).  I wonder how he would respond to this video.

I’m not sure I fully agree with him on this one, but nevertheless it has proven to be a useful second perspective in the torturous seas that are college social dynamics (Who decided that putting young, marriageable people of both sexes in a social pressure cooker called “college” was a good idea?).

 

4.  I’ll just flip on the Weather Channel.

This is usually what he says about four hours before he goes to bed a three in the morning after a John Wayne movie comes on TNT.  If it’s the one with Mississippi in it, I might be watching it with him.  Something about those chaps …

 

5.  Anything worth having is worth sharing.

This one partially explains why we have two boats, three snowmobiles, two lawn tractors, and four Triumph antique sports cars (yes, be jealous).

It also explains why he loaned a car to strangers broken down on the side of the road because they needed to get to Virginia, and why his truck is always the first to pull up and the last to leave when someone needs help moving, and why he offers boat rides to families we’ve never met if he sees them watching the boats from the dock.

 

6.  I’ll take a look at it.

This is the one he says at least once a day, when the faucet drips, when the engine makes a kind of whirring-whistling-rattling-like-a-spectre noise, when the table leg is loose, when my ankle feels funny, when ten-year-old me had a splinter, when the driveway is icy, when the basement floods, when the woodstove needs to be replenished at ten o’clock at night in bitter January.

 

If I can remember half the things my dad always says, I’ll do okay.

Seduction, or My Favorite Sentence This Month

Tags

hook, literature, Stephen Crane

“The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.”

This is possibly the most beautiful sentence I have ever read.

I am in love with the opening sentence of Stephen Crane’s novel, The Red Badge of Courage.  Editors and agents, and my publishing professor, talk a lot about the importance of the hook:  that first sentence of the manuscript that captivates, seducing the reader onward like a harpy’s song.

I am seduced—take me, Stephen.

Everything about this sentence entrances me.  In a mere twenty words it sets a scene, presents a conflict, and tells a narrative.

The opening words sweep like a paintbrush across the page, coloring a wet, green scene of spring morning when the frost is still leaving the ground.

The following phrase raises the curtain on a sleeping monster sprawled across the countryside.  The pulse quickens, the lungs tighten in the chest, the knuckles whiten.

Then follows a perfectly placed comma, pinning the reader to her seat, trapping her breath in her lungs until they threaten to burst, escalating the tension to its utter breaking point—then the sentence exhales, long and slow:  “resting.”

The beast snores once, scuffing its paw against the damp grass as it dreams, and the reader gapes from a safe distance, taking deep, quiet breaths so as not to disturb it.

The remainder of the novel is a psychological tale, a literary case study of a first-time soldier.  It is slow and brilliant, though not everyone’s cup of tea.  It’s not among my favorite novels, though I admire and enjoyed it.

That first sentence, however, left me breathless.  My dad always says that anything worth having is worth sharing:  it would be a tragedy, if not a crime, if I did not share such a gem.