Rules for Living in the New Year

Perusing through a bookstore one Christmas, I picked up a volume titled The Complete Life’s Little Instruction Book.   Hoping to find inspiration for the pending New Year, and avoiding the inevitable unloading of my wallet at the checkout counter, I thumbed through it. 

I was seeking enlightenment. I thought that perhaps instead of making several lame resolutions that I'd never keep, I'd take some advice:

#2 Have a dog.  I would like to add get rid of the cat.

#70 Whistle.  But only in the dark and only if I am alone.

#74 Eat prunes.  And, while I'm at it, I'll throw caution to the wind and eat some beets too.  This is like jumping out of a plane with a parachute or climbing Mt. Everest, I just haven’t lived until I've done it once.  And, oh, the stories I will have to tell the grandkids.

#84 Forget the Joneses.  Unless, of course, they are kin and have some of those birthdays I'm supposed to remember or, worse, blackmail pictures from my bad-hair years.

#90 Refill ice cube trays.  In what decade was this book written?

#95 Never let anyone ever see you tipsy.  When I feel tipsy coming on, I'll excuse myself to the bathroom with my bottle of wine and not come out until I'm knee walking, hardly talking drunk.

#110 Never use profanity.  Until I've practiced putting the right emphasis on the words in private, first. 

#148 Learn to handle a pistol and a rifle safely.  No duh.  I’d hate to miss my husband and hit the dog.
         
#210 Observe the speed limit.  So that when the officer stops me for lead-footing it and asks if I know what the speed limit is, I know the right answer.
  
#246 Wave at children on school buses.  And say a prayer for the bus driver.

#264 Don’t gamble.  With the exception of the prunes and the beets, naturally.

#289 Find some other way of proving your manhood than by shooting defenseless animals and birds.  I hate to say it, but I think I’m getting advice for life from a girlie-man.

#401 Don’t ever watch hotdogs or sausage being made.  Any excuse to stay out of the kitchen.

#557 Take along two big safety pins when you travel so you can pin the drapes shut in your motel room.  Hubba.  Hubba.

#582 When asked to play the piano, do it without making excuses or complaining.  Well, okay, but only if everyone promises to listen without making excuses or complaining.

#921 Go to donkey basketball games.  ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
  
#1316 Never tell anybody they can’t sing.  Think how boring the American Idol auditions would be.
  
#1392 Don’t force machinery.  No means no.
  
#1449 Share the remote control.  No way.  If I ever get my hands on it, I’m not giving it back, even if I have to forgo sleep to win.

#1487 Hug a cow.  It’s in the book.  I swear.
  
#1546 Talk to your plants.  But if anyone sees you hugging the cow or hears you talking to your plants, or you tell others about your meaningful relationships with bovine and flora, brace yourself for a rocky year.
            

Southern Girls Living Fearlessly - Day 13

Sticks and stones may break my bones but "No" will never hurt me. Say it to yourself until you believe it. We southern girls have to remind ourselves of such simple things as this, because we behave as if "No" is a fatal flaw, detracting from our inherent beauty and diminishing our ability to attract praise and gratitude from family and friends. We fear saying it and hearing it to equal degrees.

I'm here to tell you, today is the day we liberate ourselves; and we don't even have to do something tacky like leave the girls out in the cold and burn our bras. All we have to do is embrace the power of "No."

Yesterday I e-mailed this note to a newspaper editor whom I had corresponded with since the Friday before Memorial Day about placing my column. I finally decided that I needed an answer. "Yes" and we moved forward. "No" and I could go spend my energy on another project. In the end I found that she needed me to give her permission to say "No." And still she couldn't bring herself to say the word:

Dear Sally Jane,
Let's face it. Time and tradition have both proven that it is much easier to say "Yes" than it is to say "No." How else does a PTO president get elected every year? Even the Good Book advises, "Ask and ye shall receive."

Will you please (please, please, please) make the decision to place my weekly newspaper column somewhere (you can even put it next to the obituaries if you want to) in your pages? You can either run my humor column or my advice on living fearlessly; whichever you think appeals to your readers more.

Can we partner up and do this? (That's your cue to say "Yes." It rolls off the lips so much easier than that other nasty word.)

Sincerely,
Lucy Adams
Weekly Humor Columnist
Author of If Mama Don't Laugh, It Ain't Funny
Distributor of Chocolate Chip Grit Biscuits (They're good if you're hungry.)
www.ifmama.com
lucybgoosey@aol.com

Her response:

Lucy,
At this time I do not have budget funds available for another family columnist.

She probably knew that in May. She felt so uncomfortable even writing something that said "No" without coming right out and saying it (a skill honed by all southern belles), that she didn't even sign her name. What a shame that she does not know she gave me a gift. She freed me from putting that issue on my to-do list every week and empowered me to at last go out and seek another opportunity. Thank you Sally Jane!

I do not mean to imply that I took any pleasure in getting the "No." Of course not. It hurt my fragile feelings. It was scary. It made me feel uncertain and unsure of myself. But what service would I have done me or this editor had I avoided ever pressing the issue and getting a real answer? We would have both ended up fully annoyed with the other; her because I constantly called and pestered and me because I felt strung along.

When responding to someone's request that you cook 10 cakes for the church rummage sale, babysit her five children for a week while she flits off to Hawaii, or that you chair the committee to run the snakes out of the downtown sewer drains, remember the old adage, No means no, and the quicker you say it, the sooner she can ask some other sucker who will say "Yes."

Likewise, go out and ask for all the crazy things you need or want from other people, without worrying that someone might (probably will) say "No." Because, No means no. It does not mean, "You're stupid. You're ugly. I think you stink. No one has ever asked me something so ludicrous in all my born days. Get yourself back to the farm," or any other insult you can conjure up in your head.

Sticks and stones may break my bones but "No" can never hurt me, because all no means is no.

TODAY'S ASSIGNMENT: Repeat it until you believe it. Then repeat it some more for good measure.

Southern Girls Living Fearlessly - Day 12

One of the things a good southern mama teaches her daughter is to always look out for others. Always ask about everybody else's mama at the end of every conversation, take casseroles to folks in the event of birth, death, and illness, and go to great ends to never inconvenience another person just for little ol' you. In addition, my mama always advised that I should nevah, nevah, nevah make a spectacle of myself.

Which is why I didn't quite know what to do on Saturday night at a lightly attended gala to cap off the Author!Author! Book Festival in Shreveport, Louisiana. My husband and I arrived at 8:15p.m. to join a sparse crowd. Quite discomforted, I realized I would have no chance of blending into a throng of bodies. We walked down the stairs onto the expansive auditorium floor, and though not a soul flinched, my insecurity blinded me like a hot spotlight.

We stayed simply because I feared we might hurt the organizers' feelings if we departed so soon after arriving. Around 10p.m. I looked around to discover that somehow my beloved and I had missed the mass exodus of ALL the other attendees besides ourselves. It was now the two of us, the band, and a handful of hosts and hostesses. We were the ONLY guests still in residence.

My spouse turned to me and said, "We should go. There's no one here but us and I bet these folks would like to go home." The rational, do-what-your-mother-would-have-you-do, don't-wear-out-your-welcome side of me agreed. Besides, I didn't want the coordinators to think I was a loser who doesn't get out much. And so we walked toward our table to gather our things.

Suddenly, on impulse, I turned to my beau (or beaux, as we were in Louisiana) and said, "No. I'm not going. We came a long way for this. All the way from the GA-SC border to the LA-TX border, and I'm going out on that dance floor. Look around. Someone is throwing a private party just for us in this magnificent building (The Municipal Auditorium - Home of the Louisiana Hayride, where Elvis got his start) and I'm gonna soak up every last second of it."

I am married to a great and patient man. He stared at me like he did not recognize the woman in that little black dress and the pink, feathery boa. But he nodded in compliance.

And I danced the rest of the night, alone on the vast wood floor but entirely fulfilled. And I left there determined to keep on dancing, because that's what fearless living is all about; grabbing those moments of discomfort, obligation, uncertainty, fear, and sucking them like sweet watermelon from the rind. God loves me and he's giving me these moments as part of my total allotment in life. But he leaves it up to me to decide how to use them.

I plan to dance like the band is playing just for me. I hope you will, too.

TODAY'S ASSIGNMENT: Turn on your stereo, radio, i-pod to your favorite music and dance in the living room, across your office floor, in the dressing room at Macy's, wherever you find yourself. Let loose and dance. The band is playing just for you. Hear the music. This is your life to live fearlessly.

Southern Girls Living Fearlessly - Day 1

I present to my readers, the Day 1 of the Southern Girl's Primer on Living Fearlessly. Make sure you do the assignments found at the end of each day. Before long, you'll be living a new, more vibrant life, without ever giving up your neutral decorating pallet:

There are opportunity costs built into everything we choose. We often overlook the fine print at the bottom of the contract and sign a waiver without reading it. If we didn't we would never make a decision or move forward. Making an informed decision is preceded by long periods of failure to act.

I've decided enough is enough. I will live fearlessly. I'm throwing caution tape to the wind, unfurling it like big yellow celebration streamers. Let it wrap someone else in complacency.

Oh heavens! What am I saying? A good southern woman can't do that! We have rules, we have standards, for goodness's sake, we have etiquette to follow. I would simply die if I thought my neighbors disapproved of my behavior.

But there must be a way. Certainly living fearlessly doesn't mean wearing a black dress to a wedding or a hot pink cocktail number to a funeral. I don't have to paint my monogram on the garage door or hang out in a juke joint to live fearlessly. Southern girls can honor their heritage, keep their proper prim, and still throw a buttered biscuit now and again. We can know who our people are, compose a polite invitation or thank you note, deliver casseroles to the sick and deceased, and still sweeten our tea with pure sugar.

Take me, for example. For six years a bare bulb hung from the ceiling of my 1915 home. I decided when we moved in that I would buy a crystal chandelier to match the huge ones in the living room and dining room. I feared marring the traditional architecture of my home by hanging something more modern. After six years of concern, worry, saving, angst, searching, I found myself in a lighting store making an impulse buy.

I purchased a walnut colored pendant fixture. After my husband hung it, I looked up and realized what a fool I had been all these years, tangled up in caution tape. It wasn't a crystal chandelier that the room needed, it was a touch of me.

YOUR FIRST ASSIGNMENT: What your life needs is a touch of YOU in it. Today go buy a piece of canvas, an old board, a slip of tin roof, anything with a paintable flat surface (but, do be tasteful, no saw blades or birdhouses). Using whatever paints and brushes you have, create your own folk art, abstract art, self-portrait, etc. There are three rules to this:
1) Do not paint what other people expect you to paint.
2) Your finished work must be displayed in a common area of your house, where guests to your home will see it.
3) You may never, under any circumstances, including being pressured by a realtor or interior decorator, make excuses for it, diminish it verbally, or move it to a less conspicuous area; that would be like badmouthing YOURSELF and hiding away in a closet and we all know a proper lady would never poor mouth the family name.