Advice from Mom
By Rita Lessard
Where does the time go? Here we are again nearing the end of another school year. Education is so very important today. Unless you have at least your Grade 12 diploma, you would be hard pressed to get any kind of job, unlike in my day, so many eons ago, when if you had at least your Grade 7 you were considered literate. In Quebec, where I grew up, you started high school in Grade 8 and were done in Grade 11, and then you were considered quite educated.
Times have changed for the better. As far back as I can remember, people have asked the age old question of kids: what would you like to be when you grow up? A few years ago, I clipped out the following joke from a magazine:
All the children had been photographed and the teacher was trying to persuade them each to buy a copy of the group picture.
“Just think how nice it will be to look at it when you are all grown up and say, ‘There’s Jennifer, she’s a lawyer,’ or ‘That’s Michael, he’s a doctor.’”
A small voice from the back of the room rang out, “And there’s the teacher, she’s still old, nasty and wrinkled.”
People make mistakes all the time, and as much as I hate to admit it, I’ve made many mistakes. Sometimes I know I drive my sister nuts. She always says I’m smart, but for quite some time there was a word in my vocabulary that I was saying wrong. The word was regardless, and I was always saying irregardless. Joan let me get away with this for a while, but she couldn’t take it anymore and corrected me on it. Wow. Who knew?
I have a hard time correcting people and perhaps many others do to, but I guess sometimes you’ve got to bite the bullet and say something.
My mother became a widow at the young age of 47. After my father’s death and a decent period of time had passed, she started dating again. Men really enjoyed her company because she was a lot of fun and quite jolly. Sometimes my mother had a bit of a problem with words. One time, when she was visiting the doctor’s office, the doctor suggested she was going through menopause. Well, my mother was very indignant about this news and said, “We’ll I’ve been a widow for three years now, and I can assure you I have not had a pause between men.”
Final words of wisdom: Stay in school and get all the education you can. Someone once said, Knowledge is power. How very true.