Date: Thu, 03 Sep 1998 19:28:41 -0400
From: "Robert G. Grimes" <grimes@fcol.com>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: applied memetics (ignore last)
Ton,
You remind me of an incident in Birmingham, Alabama, when I was transferred
there back during the "bad times." Fortunately, I was transferred out after
three years before I got into any trouble with the segregation movement there.
Anyway, we used the same maid that the young couple next door used but on
different days of the week. She had a small baby and we all laughed when we
heard the maid cry out, "Baby's crying!" She would not pick up the baby or
tend it as she was a house cleaner, not a baby picker upper, so she always
called the mother.
One day she told the young mother that she wanted the next Wednesday off. The
girl knew that the maid didn't work the following day, Thursday, nor the
previous day, Tuesday, so she asked if she had to be gone on Wednesday. "No
ma'am," was the reply. "Then why don't you take off one of those days that you
don't work," asked the young mother? "Because then it wouldn't be a DAY OFF,"
replied the maid!
So, once one catches the rhythm of it, it is not so hard to understand. Still,
it was an entirely different culture way back then (1950's) and the KKK
actually picked up a gentleman and castrated him as an initiation rite into
their particular Klan group during the first month that I arrived!
Fortunately, they set a new record by sending the offenders to jail for mayhem
and it was written up because it had not been done previously, even though such
things were fairly common back then. I was very happy to move on as they blew
on black minister's house up once each month almost with out fail. The house
sat upon pilings and the explosion just tipped it over rather than destroying
it and they would right it, and it would happen again later on. They would
drive by and toss a stick of dynamite under or something under the house from
the street, just pausing to get the job done.
Thank goodness those days are in the past....
Cordially,
Bob
> To her utmost surprize, however,
> the nanny reported to her the very next morning to resign. Since the Dutch
> woman sensed the nanny didn't particularly _like_ to leave, she probed into
> the motivation for this puzzling decision, and the nanny told her she was
> more or less forced to leave, because now she didn't need any money for the
> next couple of months or so. And in such a situation, it was simply "not
> done" to continue working. The supposed "laziness" of people from certain
> cultures, takes on a very different meaning here! The nanny in this story
> was far from "unwilling" to work, she just felt she had to to the "right"
> thing - by the implicit code of her society.--
Bob Grimes
http://members.aol.com/bob5266/
http://www.hotwired.com/members/profile/bobinjax/
http://www.phonefree.com/Scripts/cgiParse.exe?sID=28788
Jacksonville, Florida
Bob5266@aol.com robert.grimes@mailexcite.com Bobgrimes@zdnetmail.com
Man is not in control, but the man who knows he is not in control is more in
control...
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore....."
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