My mom had a lot of unusual sayings. Some of them were funny and some were so subtle that it took years for me to figure them out. Oftentimes when she was tapped to drive me to some event she would call up to my room "Are you ready or ready's brother?" Since she came from a family of a sister and two brothers I guessed she might have heard that when she was growing up. I was an "only" child so it did not make much sense to me til years later amidst the frustration I had getting my own son out the door on time. That's when her meaning hit my noggin: In some far-away imaginary place "Not Ready" is the brother of "Ready" That simple but subtle question was her way of prodding me along. It was not sarcastic or mean-spirited. It simply asked me to chose my identity with the sense that Ready was her favorite but I was free to be either of the two.
My mom grew up during the Great Depression but her parents were able to weather those times without having to pull any of their children out of school to work. She graduated high school in 1939 then continued to work in an Ice Cream Parlor where she met my dad who was a Merchant Marine. They were married on Memorial Day 1943, and used Gas Ration Coupons gifted by relatives to drive to Harrisburg for a one-day honeymoon. My dad, who was now a conscripted Merchant Marine, returned to sea the next day. As the youngest child it fell to my mom to take care of her recently widowed mother. She got a job as a seamstress in a shirt factory and became very proficient at operating a blind stitch sewing machine. Since she was on "piece work" she often got caught up and prodded the Foreman to get her more work. Apparently the befuddled Foreman would ask her what other work she thought she could do to fill the time. Her reply was always the same: "I am paid to sew--not to think. That is your job." Guess that is why she often encouraged me with this saying: "What you don't have in your noggin; you have to have in your feet" It took me a long time to figure that one out too until I discovered that the sewing machines in those days were controlled by foot pedals.
Pick 102 - Generation Alpha
Screen technologies are the base of everything that characterizes Generation Alpha and truly distinguishes them from every other generati...
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