Obedience

Obedience

Think outside the box. (DO)

Color outside the lines. (DON'T)

Rub somebody the wrong way. (DON'T)

Touch somebody. (DON'T, unless you mean metaphorically)

Mow the lawn. (DO)

Walk on the grass. (DON'T)

Call people names. (DON'T)

Face the music. (DO)

Fix the problem. (DO)

Get lost. (Either DO or DON'T. It depends.)

Other options. Figure out whether it's DO or DON'T for you: 

BYOB

Steal

Yell

Speed

Some of us spend our whole lives following the rules and obeying instructions. That especially holds true if you are a good Methodist like I used to be. I mean, I have spent most of my life trying to follow the Book (with a capital letter).

Trying to is the important part of what I'm trying to explain, and it would really help if you understood my probblem. Because it really is a problem, this being caught between a rock and a hard place, the devil and the deep blue sea, this ocean of dos and don'ts. This wanting to follow the rules and to be set free from them.

Am I the only one who feels like this? I am open to answers and suggestions. Do I fight the good fight or bow my head and say yes, ma'am, yes, sir?

And along the way, a cure for all these clichés would be welcome...

You probably know what happened, because otherwise I wouldn't be writing this. I was getting so many mixed messages over the years that I got lost. It was either the straight and narrow or the road less taken. Darn! I longed for both. It started when I was very young and innocent. Then things got worse because being read to, then doing my own reading, too much of it, addled the brain, to use an expression that should never have gone out of style.

Maybe it will help if I were to provide a few samples from the briar patch that l know passes for my mind. If it's too hard to follow, give me a minute and I'll find someone or something to blame.

For example, let's look at a few colors and think about how people normally use them in descriptions: pink carnations, blue, skies, white snowflakes, purple... well, violets. Remember that this is the smallest list I could come up with. 

My own excitement regarding colors comes from the unexpected, the improvised, the quirky:

Axolotls. (Look them up; they're pink salamanders. They are also critically endangered, so should not be considered cute pets. Do check out photos of them.)

Grass (I assume you know the type of music that comes from the Appalachian region It's also the blue color of Poa pratensis that grows in Kentucky.)

Nights. (Not the ones in armor, that's a different spelling. White ones are when you don't sleep, and there are lots of those for some of us.)

Rain. (The one in the song by Prince. He said it referred to blue + red, the purple in the sky the end of the world, Doomsday, and getting through it by being with the one you love. Quite the color choice.)

Do you need more examples of colors that can be approached more creatively than we usually do, with our red, white, and blue blinders? No? I didn't think so. I for one don't need anybody to tell me now what color a cow should be. (Thinking of the fourth color on the list. I've never seen a purple cow, and I never hope to see one. But I can tell you right now, I'd rather see than be one. All children learn that rhyme. I wanted to see one, though. Imagine that animal set against a bright blue sky or lying in bright green grass.)

Or an elephant. Gray or pink. (I never understood the connection between pink pachyderms and alcohol, unless people used to drink only pink champagne. Why not red or burgundy-colored?)

Teal is my favorite color for now, and if I saw a teal cow or an elephant right this minute I would coax it to come home with me, even if my mother told me not to. If teal were to go out of style, I would still keep it.

Names, let's look at this example because it is a real dilemma and we should follow the rules when using them. Notice that's on my first list: name-calling. However, if we don't call people names, or rather by their names, it could get risky. I mean, do we just say "Hey, you!" and hope the right person answers? I was taught that wasn't polite.

There are also other matters to consider when dealing with nomenclature. Does your name have more than one spelling? Mine does. Does it have a diminutive form? Mine has several, but if you use any of them, your life might become a bit shorter. Just so you know. I'm not going to apologize for not allowing anybody to put a "y" on the end of my name, although people try to do it all the time. 

These are my instructions and don't ask me why I feel this way. (I don't know.) (I don't want to know.) Only my mother could disobey me and she's not around any more. I also have secret names and have talked about them before. It's not like the custom Rigoberta Menchu describes for her Quiché family. I am not from Guatemala, but think maybe lots of people have names they never tell the world. And nobody who is alive now will ever know mine. So don't call me names you don't know.

Those are my rules. Only I can break them. Also, don't, please, make me diminutive. I have just said it upsets me, because it has taken years to outgrow that. It's belittling. (Another good vintage word that has fallen by the wayside.) If you choose not to follow my instructions, it is likely that I'll call you every name in the book, whether it has a capital B or not.

If you are bent on rubbing me the wrong way, then at least don't touch me.The instructions are pretty simple. Nowadays other instructions are pretty simple as well. No is no. Don't touch. You might break something or somebody. Fiinally I have learned that lesson, although you will never know how and when I learned it. It's none of your business. Don't ask. It's like my names, a secret. Part of everything is broken for me because I didn't follow instructions. The implied, untold ones, never stated or written. 

Or maybe I followed them too well.

Do you know thw color of furious?

Why not give good instructions as to what we should or shouldn't do? Sometimes over the years all I got was a look, or a silence, a turning away when someone should have faced the music. Those were the times I wanted instructions - first a, then b, then c - and was battered because I was unable to follow the rules to something I neither knew nor understood.

Say those names, say them. I should have said something, and it would have been nice to know. When nobody stood and spoke or sat and told me, I got lost without having been told. That was before the song came out. Maybe I should have waited.

That is probably why my good friend Emily has always known more about things and how to do them (or not) than I ever did. And they say she was a recluse! No, she must have had different sorts of teachers than I did. My teachers - the bad ones - went by the book or the Book. She knew when she needed help, but I was left to flounder between do and don't and we can't talk about it.

Say the name or I can't follow instructions.

Still, despite never having been told to do it, told I should read or write poetry or I would die (which was the truth), I stumbled onto Emily's path, into her house, and toward her desk, where she was writing to me:

This is my letter to the World

That never wrote to Me -

The simple News that Nature told -

With tender Majesty.

Her Message is committed

To Hands I cannot see -

For love of Her - Sweet - countrymen -

Judge tenderly of Me.

Judge tenderly. I never thought I could give anybody such instructions, never believed anybody would listen. It's a hopeful poem to me, however. Might have saved me from a lot of angst at not knowing the right way to do things. 

Because when you know the rules and expectations, know how you're supposed to think, then you can go about consciously disobeying, can think outside any box people set before you. I mean, think about how long it took Dorothy and her companions to figure out where the Wizard was actually coming from. When they did, though, they knew exactly what to do.

We need rules before we can break them. 

Which leads me to one last example. It's also a poem, and I'd like you to think about its meaning, the advice it gives. This helpful poem, a quite famous and oft-anthologized one, is by Robert Louis Stevenson. It makes readers' backs straighten, their eyes look forward, their courage soar. Its title? "If."

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you...

The ifs go on anaphorically for twenty-nine more lines which are quite full of useful advice and lots of encouragement for proper, wholesome, moral living. Very inspirational. Also, it's a great poem for developing one's moral direction and thus creating a straight and narrow path. It is comforting and I was happy to have found it while wandering the yellow book (not brick; that had already been done) road to answers.

The only thing was the last line of the composition was troubling. You see, according to Stevenson, if you follow all his masterful and undeniably laudable instructions...

"You'll be a Man, my son."

Another word with a capital letter. Man, like the Book.

Darn! I had to throw away all those great rules, because I had been born a girl and didn't plan to change just to fit the poem.

Maybe this story is over, but there is more poetry to be written, rules to be made and broken. I'll see you up around the bend.