My Junior high school teacher told my father to correct the way I walked. “She walks with her toes pointing out—most unlady-like.” Since then I was conscious of pulling those toes back to center and walked the proper walk.
Eat with the correct utensils. Laugh with a hand over mouth. Sit with legs crossed. Don’t talk while others are speaking. Be quiet! Have I ever considered skipping, running, crawling, climbing just as proper as walking to go from one place to another? No. I didn’t think about these things. My mind stopped at proper social behaviors and that was it.
And that’s the tragedy of it, when there are so many variations and ways to go about one thing. They are there in plain sight but I don’t recognize them as being “proper”, or as an alternative to what I already know. How utterly restrictive and narrow my world is even though it spreads out like a feast before me. I wish I don’t have shades.
