seventeenth century, and Cromwell and the Puritans came to reign, the Roundheads’ somber black clothes made sharp contrast to the frills and lace of the court and Cavaliers. So, anyone who had a bit of errant finery peeping out got reminded that Charlie was dead. And the tradition stuck. A friend in Pennsylvania heard it like this from some women at her church when she was seven: “Dear, it’s snowing down south.” “No, it’s not,” she cheerily chirped back, “I talked to my grandparents down in Georgia yesterday and they said it was warm.” Since their sweet politism undaunted her, they were forced to just tell her the truth. Her slip. When is it that we stop expecting people to say what they mean? It seems an odd fracture, but if we never make the break, society looks quite impossible. * What is the ego? And where does it live? I didn’t know when I was a kid. A children’s book I got from the library first introduced me to the mysterious word. In the story, the girl’s father played tennis and had gotten scraped up on the court. As he lay on the couch, the girl asked him if anything had been seriously damaged. “Just my ego,” he told her. From my acute acumen and literary skills, I pieced together that the ego must either be on the forehead or somewhere around the knees (the two places where the book mentioned he had icepacks). Since then, I have learned the ego is not around a mysterious bend in one’s anatomy, but inside, hidden, and thus, even more dangerous. It simmers on a back burner of brain. Usually on low, but occasionally, the most fearsome flames will leap out. * She is a professor, with a smile as sweet as your grandma’s, but a mind lithe as Blake’s tyger with gleaming eyes. When we are going over psychology and the development of language, she keeps bringing up her firstborn son who is a toddler. She tells us he used to howl a fit when she left him at the nursery. He stopped, tho, soon after he learned the word, “goodbye.” When he said the word “goodbye” out loud, he was in control of the situation, and his brain registered that she would be back. She has also noticed that when he feels threatened,
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