by Thomas Paine''s (1737-1809)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Back in the not-so-long ago days of rabbit ear television tuning apparatuses and over-the-counter ointments, cough syrups and decongestants that kept us out of the doctor’s office before the FDA banned them for the sake of non-functional health insurance, we had this saying about somebody that behaved in a way that made no sense at all, even in the days when I was just a fourth grade 10-year-old kid.

“Mama’ ‘nem.” That’s old country hillbilly-ebonics for “ Mama and the rest of them” with “them” being Uncle Willie & Auntie Suzie who never got married but had two twin sons Cuz’ns Cleophus and Rufus Jr. who would drink out of your drunk neighbor’s old beer cans he left in the road by the alley and talked to their imaginary friends all the time. Even us kids learned not to be crazy from our crazy relatives that we just sorta thought were normal to have.

No such thing to us as a dysfunctional family. We just functioned. Just ask those of us who tuned black and white TVs with a pair of pliers from the junk drawer in the kitchen.

But wouldn’t it be grand for those of us yet to embark upon the threshold of age-related medical accountability to look up from our nursing home beds and say, “I trust the person taking care of me?”

All I know is that after one midnight trek to Wally-World (y’all know, that American mega store with all the non-American made merchandise, complete with layaway plans for the ones who don’t know how to say no to an impulse purchase. . . .And yes, I’m a recovering shop-a-holic) I really don’t think that some, and note I did say some, young people under the age of 30 have a lick-a-sense.

I think the entire problem with most, and I did say most of the elected officials in America today are they forgot what Mama ‘nem used to say about a matter.

Let’s consider the simpleton''s for-instance of people having civil liberties for doing everything from spitting in your face to dancing naked on a subway train.  Mama ‘nem just looked up for a moment from gardening or hangin’ clothes out on the line with wooden clothes pins made from contented pine trees and simply say, without the benefit of a college or even high school education. . . .

“Now that fool sho'' is crazy!”

Example Two: Everybody should recall the days when extremely pregnant women and fat girls who were not ashamed to acknowledge they were fat and still strut like a queen any old how that women didn’t show their stomachs.

(King Solomon shows us ancient common sense in Proverbs 11:22:  "Like a gold ring in a pig''s snout is a beautiful woman who shows no discretion").

Back in the day we didn’t fantasize about belly buttons in the open. Everybody knew that only sluts with no job opportunities outside of picking up old men from outside of bars wore those kinds of abdominal-revealing clothes. Now of course if you were Diane Carroll or Lena Horne you had an excuse to model a two-piece itzy-bitzy teenie weenie yellow polka-dot bikini but dare you embarrass your family like that. Even  your unemployed Cousin Boo Boo who keeps gettin’ arrested for holdin’ up liquor stores with a sling shot in his pocket because he’s too proud to work at Macky D’s has sense enough to know that you just don’t haul off and forget to look in a mirror before you leave the house. I mean where’s the self respect? If you were born to wear spandex your mirror is the one thing in this world that will not lie to you even if you’re dumb enough to believe your own fantasies.

Final-Three-Times-A-Charm: If the president was my brother, and Mama ‘nem found out that he was slipping into darkness with a woman he worked with who was not his wife, and always having meetings, giving her little kisses on the cheek at State of the Union address engagements, and always slippin'' into darkness and going out of the country every time a rating slips or he’s afraid to own up to selling out America to some folks—please note that I said some--who will be able to bring mess in and out of my homeland when my friends neighbors and up-the-creek strangers want to know if they can find Waldo in New Orleans, then Mama ‘nem’s from back in the good ol’ day wouldn’t even be having it. You know if Mama Barbara was up there in the White House she''d probably tell "W":

Land sakes boy! When are you gonna stop leavin'' the country everytime your ratings hit the fan? All this runnin'' ''round the planet makin'' everybody hate America who aint'' got clue one about what we''re all about. Lemme tell ya'' sumptin'' now son, you know you can''t stand to be told when you ain'' right but baby. . .  this just ain''t all about you!  And it ain''t ''bout cha daddy ''cause at least HE''D LISTEN to me when I was tellin'' him he was ''bout to screw up, which brings me to another point. Even if his Secretary of State WAS female, he wasn''t runnin'' round with some other woman with a high priced hair weave sneakin'' outta town. 

Now you been to the churchhouse and to grocery sto'' befo'' and you KNOW now  people talk! Especially if it''s caught on camera.

And it ain''t about  saying you''re gonna get somebody you probably ain''t ''bout to catch so just come on home and own up to your mistakes like a man. What ''cha tryin'' to do to the family name boy? Makin'' me look bad out there in front of folk who don''t even know who I am or who the rest of us our? Doggonit! Get a life and get some guts and stop countin'' chickens before they hatch talkin'' all this  victory when you ain''t even got victory in your own back yard!. . . and yes, Mama still loves ya."

Besides, FOX news nor Jerry Springer nor Judge Judy and no one else would be sticking their nose in my private business because my family was too stupid to keep their business out of the street.

Like I said before, dysfunction is the way America works. Another Proverbs 11 verse says "He who brings trouble on his family will inherit only wind,  and the fool will be servant to the wise. He who brings trouble on his family will inherit only wind, and the fool will be servant to the wise."  (My opinion is this includes educated and international political and religious fools too.)

 So let’s stop showing the rest of the world how dumb some of our relatives and rulers may behave and just take care of business here at home. And instead of putting so many millions of dollars into researching why children are such poor performers in school as compared to others, BLAST! Just give his parent a decent job so they can have somethin'' better than a "maynaise sammich and som gubmint cheeze" for school lunch.

Give those babies some meat and potatoes instead of some processed mess that''s gonna mess them up so bad that they wouldn''t be able to care for us in our old age years. . .

. . . jus’ like Mama ‘nem used to do.

© 2006, cynth’ya lewis reed

All rights reserv’d