One Lump Or Two?

My grandma, and everyone from my parents’ generation back to colonial times, was born and raised in the South--an area particularly fond of their rules-for-living sayings. Southerners live by very specific and simple codes of behavior which can often be concisely packaged in adage form. While listening to phrases made famous by the movie Forrest Gump, I felt sure the writers must have spent time with my grandmother and we should initiate some aggressive intellectual property lawsuit, or at least get some royalties. One warning I repeatedly heard as a little (and not so little) girl was that “pretty is as pretty does”-- meaning that, look as nice as you might on the outside, your actions tell what kind of person you are. I understood the sentiments, but got really annoyed at their frequency of use (although I’d give just about anything to hear them now). One opportunity I had to polish my social propriety skills as a child was a weekly coffee klatsch with my grandma. I remember sitting in the vinyl-covered breakfast nook learning how to crook my pinkie finger just so and drink my hot milk coffee substitute like a lady. In Tea For Ruby by Sarah Ferguson (yes, the Duchess of York), a free-spirited girl gets all kinds of advice from everyone when she is invited to have tea with the queen (who turns out to be her beloved grandmother). I like that grandmas teach us how to be and then love us no matter what.

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/f/sarah-ferguson/tea-for-ruby.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah,_Duchess_of_York