Finally, over half a century later, I realize what we meant when we complained about kids who “pulled on their mothers handbags and screamed for attention.” Someone wrote a book called “Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” This piece is like that.
Why did we say everything about that kid “pulling on their mother’s pocketbook?”
There were generally two types of people I was raised with, people with the courtesy we practiced and the lower level whites and blacks. But when they were around us, they tried to learn from us. If one of their kids got out of hand, they would slap them. By the time a kid got old enough to reach and grab hold of their mother’s pocketbook, they didn’t do it.
In our case, by the time I got old enough to stand up and reach my mother’s pocketbook, it never OCURRED to me to do it. Yelling was trash, yelling was nigger stuff.
But it worked TWO ways. If a child who could barely stand said something, everybody LISTENED. If you are a child that age and you have a conscience, that makes you say something worthwhile and then shut up. You learn almost from your first words not to act like a nigger, not to be trash.
But in a way, I was spoiled rotten. Almost from the time I stopped wearing diapers, I was used to being LISTENED TO. But LISTENING was NOT what passes for listening today. Today “listening” means you stand there and let the other person FINALLY finish while you stand there panting like a dog to say what you want to say. You have no idea what the other person was talking about, but you let him finish, and that is LISTENING.
The result of one person waiting to say what he wants to say as soon as anther’s lips stop moving is what passes for “the art of conversation” which the Internet is supposed to have destroyed.
I just spent a week listening to this “art of conversation” and every minute of it I WAS dying to get back to this blog and to Stormfront. Only HERE do we have what I call conversations.
The computer has SAVED the real art of conversation.
#1 by Elizabeth on 05/31/2007 - 11:14 am
Well said. I find this frustrating, too, especially when I am trying to communicate something important to someone who thinks he or she is more important than I.
I *listen*. I have learned the hard way to ask people if they have said what they have just said to me: I have occasionally been reduced to tears because I took something someone told me and ran with it only to get “But I meant ________!”
If I *listen* to you, I expect you to *listen* to me. To me, *listening* can literally be a matter of life and death because I have survived two bouts with cancer and hope to survive the recurrence which was found in December.
#2 by shari on 05/31/2007 - 1:03 pm
I guess that you could say that there is an awful lot of chatter and very little conversation. Sad, as it really would be nice be around flesh and blood people, and feel part of the conversation. I think it has every connction with the lack of truth in our society and the lies that so many assume are true.
Elizabeth, I’m sorry to hear of your news. I will pray for you.
#3 by Alan on 06/01/2007 - 4:20 am
Very little creative thought goes into todays conversations. The majority today, never learned to think independently, they were stifled early in life buy their elders who put them down for stepping out of line, the elders may have called them stupid. Kind of sad, if these older folks had listened to the 3 year old they may have learned something, creative thinking is scarce, who would have ever thought it is most common in 3 year olds. Bob is one smart cookie.