Words Will Never Hurt Me:
Advice Straight From My Mother
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Remembering my mother, who died more than 50 years ago, is a lot like looking through a broken kaleidoscope: the light is cloudy, the pieces don’t line up, and there’s no discernible pattern.
I see the blue and green plaid dress she liked to wear. I taste the liver she couldn’t cook, smell the fried baloney.
Sometimes I am lucky. Sometimes I hear and I see, remember the complete scene.
When my sister Anne was six, our Aunt Judy gave her a bicycle, a basic cruiser model, popular in the 1950s, with wide tires, coaster brakes, saddle seat and metal frame pillion seat directly behind it. Although I was too young to ride a two-wheeler, Mom made sure Anne shared the bike by sticking me on that pillion seat and warning me — profusely — about the dangers of getting my feet stuck in the spokes.
Pointing her finger at me, she told me about the little boy she knew, who was just about my age and hadn’t listened to his mother. When he rode on the back of his sister’s bike, he just let his legs dangle willy-nilly, and before you knew it, his little four-year-old feet were trapped in those spokes, and like razor blades those spokes just sliced his feet right off — his little, four-year-old feet. He never walked again, plus he got tetanus, lockjaw, and mumps, all of which made his mother cry and cry and cry.
“Now,” my mother said, her finger still in my face, “you don’t want to make me cry and cry the way that little boy made his mother cry, do you?”
My eyes wide, I shook my head vigorously. No way did I want to lose my feet, and although I wasn’t sure why my being footless would have such a dreadful effect on my mother, I didn’t really want to upset her either, so I assured her I’d be good, then climbed on the back of Anne’s bike.
Off we went around the block, Anne struggling to balance the bike with both of us on it and me sticking my legs out to the side as far from those spokes as possible. All was going well until we passed a group of three hooligans, about eight years old, wearing striped t-shirts and dungarees cuffed at the ankle. They were sitting in the dirt, playing jacks, and the moment they saw us, they ran to the sidewalk, pointing and laughing:
“Two on a bike. Two on a bike.”
Anne and I burst into tears at this horrifyingly true observation. Sobbing, Anne pedaled as fast as she could back to the safety of our own house and our own mother, who, once she was apprised of this dreadful tale, would no doubt give those three young ruffians a piece of her mind. Anne and I jumped off the bike, raced up the stairs and into the house, screaming: “Mom. Mommy.”
Mom, came running out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, looking alarmed, no doubt certain that I hadn’t listened to her, and that I’d stuck my feet into the spokes and was now hobbling about on my ankle bones, but when we told her what had actually happened, she laughed.
“You get back on your bike and you go find those little boys and if they start hollering at you again, you just say, ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.’ You got that?”
Anne and I nodded. Mom had just bestowed words more powerful than abracadabra or et cum spiritu tuo. We were protected. Off we went once again, and just like before we ran into those little boys, who came running to the sidewalk, pointing and laughing:
“Two on a bike. Two on a bike.”
And Anne and I, in unison, muttered our magic words: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
The little boys laughed and picked up a pile of rocks and began hurling them at us. Anne and I raced home, crying once again. This time when we told Mom what had happened, she shrugged.
“Doesn’t always work,” she admitted then ushered us inside to the kitchen, where she made us peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cut into quarters — what I called cupcakes — and served them with glasses of cold chocolate milk. Mom knew there wasn’t much that chocolate milk couldn’t heal.
