There was a bumper sticker lying around the house and JT asked if we could put it on my car. "No" was my immediate response.
Why was I so quick to say no?
On laundry day I sort my clothes, whites, colors, darks and jeans. I always start with my whites. Which I always chalked up to my Type A tendencies.
When you wash dishes you always start with the glasses, or is it the silverware? Next, you wash the silverware, or is it the glasses? I do neither, and every time there is that tiny voice of my mother telling me I'm washing my dishes in the wrong order.
Why did I say no to the bumper sticker on the car, and worry about the order of clothes and dishes? Because my parent's didn't put bumper stickers on their cars, and, as I already mentioned, my mother had a thing with sequences.
OK, in all fairness, each situation had a very good explanation as to why, but we can save those for another day.
My point for today is, what once may have not been given any thought (no bumper stickers on the car) or been considered a Type A oddity (laundry and dishes) is now given a little bit more scrutiny as I'm trying to explain to my children why we do what we do.
And, as previously mentioned "... each situation had a very good explanation ..." Take the laundry for instance, today's laundry technology, washing machines and detergent, allows us to mix our colors any way we want. Our grandmothers were limited to one load of water and lye soap; the water was heated once for the whites, and as the water cooled you washed the colors and then the darks.
However, no matter how advanced today's laundry technology may be, you still can't mix your reds and whites, and wash them in hot water.
What "traditions" do you find yourself passing down to your children, and can you remember why they are done that way?
3 comments:
I always wash sheets and towels on Mondays because my mom always did. However, the reason she did was because she always had Mondays off. Dex thinks I'm nuts!
Jana
One of my favorite analogies (that I use as often as I can and in as many circumstances as I can) is one about monkeys, a ladder, bananas, and a firehose. (Stay with me here...) Five monkeys were put in a cage, in the center of which was a ladder, and above the ladder was a cluster of bananas. If a monkey tried to climb the ladder to get a banana, all the monkeys were sprayed with the firehose, including the one climbing the ladder, knocking him to the ground. Eventually, the monkeys stopped climbing the ladder. One of the monkeys was replaced with a new monkey, who immediately attempted to climb the ladder to fetch a banana, and all the monkeys grabbed him and pulled him down before the firehose was turned on them. One by one, all the original monkeys were replaced with new ones, who were always immediately tackled to prevent the firehose from being turned on. Eventually, none of the original monkeys were left, yet whenever a new monkey was introduced to the group, the tackling continued, even though none of the monkeys had ever experienced the firehose.
I was trying to think of the things I do the same and I can't think of anything! In fact I pretty much do everything opposite of what my parents did.
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