Prohibitions

[bunn]

Something or other got me thinking about things that were Not Allowed when I was a small child.
<
I could only think of a few:
Do not cross the Busy Road To Go To the Sweet Shop On Your Own
This one was pretty comprehensively ignored, though I seem to recall that we did cross the busy road with considerable caution as a result, less because we were scared of being run over, so much as to avoid being spotted.  It was strange to revisit the area and discover that the Busy Road is in fact pretty much a quiet backwater with a 40MPH speed limit.

Do not Mess with Daddy's Saxophones.
The Crown Jewels of the household, to be handled only with permission, extreme caution and clean hands.

Don't put Your Knees on the Back of My Seat.
I failed to manage this many times.  Why they don't put a solid core into car seats so that anything pressing against the back can't be felt by the person sitting in the front is beyond me.  Though perhaps nowadays they do.  I've not tried it.

Do not Play with Matches
I can remember being told that one and thinking 'it had never occurred to me to play with matches! Matches, of course!  This ruling was undermined when my Dad taught me an important life skill: how to burn a match from one end to the other without burning your fingers.  He said that one day someone in a pub would bet me that I could not do it.  This has not yet happened, but I am still hopeful that one day it will.

Plus, the no matches rule is hard to enforce if , of  your various gas appliances, none of them have working ignition buttons, so you have matches everywhere and are constantly using them to light things.

Also, playing with matches resulted in pleasing small fires, which could be used to toast the marshmallow you bought from the sweet shop you weren't supposed to visit, on your way home, so you had eaten everything before it could be spotted.   Other sweets were proved to toast less successfully.  Refreshers, for example.  It's hard to get them on the stick, and then they just burn...

Oh: I remembered 3 more!:
Do not Take Bones From the Dog
Do Not Go Near the Dog When She Is In Bed
Do Not Mess With the Cat.
All of these, so far as I recall, were enforced firmly, but without excessive violence, by the animals involved.  Another animal-related dictum that doesn't really count as it's not a 'do not' was 'they don't belong to you, they belong to themselves'. Which is quite profound really.

I really really should do some work now.

Comments

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Hmm...

Never, Ever Play the Piano Without Washing Your Hands

When Visiting, Never, Ever Ask For Something. Always wait until you're offered. This often resulted in me getting a really bad headache as a teenager when visiting relatives who, camel-like, seemed to be able to endure without liquid refreshment for hours on end, causing me to sit there slowly dying of thirst all day because I Wasn't Allowed to say, "please can I have a cup of tea?"

Never Fill The Kettle With More Water Than You Need. Another one from my teenage years, and one that I'm still incapable of disobeying, much to the irritation of work-mates who come into the kitchen, drawn by the sound of a boiling kettle, and find no water left over for them.

Never, Ever Write in a Book. I still remember with annoyance the time I drew very, very thin pencil lines on a map in a book, to help me copy it out, fully intending to rub them out and leave no trace, and my Dad was outraged and made me rub them out there and then, not letting me draw the map first.


I do remember that I made up prohibitions of my own, especially at Christmas. Far from getting up early and opening my presents at dawn, I was the one who decreed that no-one was allowed to even go into the room that the presents were in until everyone was up and breakfast was finished.

[purplecat]

I finally broke and told G she could colour in the pictures in the fairy books as long as she didn't use felt tip because I couldn't think of a single logical reason not to.

B. sits and observes in stony disapproving silence.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

We used to have a Children's Story of Christmas book where the front cover nativity scene had been entirely coloured in, *in toothpaste*. Which had then been allowed to dry. I can't remember now if this masterwork of modern art was created by me or my sister, but I can still remember the strange stale mintiness of the cover. Forever the flavour of nativity scenes...

Things could be *so much worse!*

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

I have just about gotten to the stage of putting yellow stickies in my copy of the legislation occasionally, but I have to remove them once I've finished that bit of work (although to be honest it tends to fall open at the right page these days - I've obviously spent far too long looking at FA1996 in part 1a). I will also annotate a draft document that I've printed out for the purpose.

I shudder to see other people with legislation bristling with stickies and highlit bits, and I have great trouble annotating course slides (though this is largely because I know I'll never ever look at them again, so rarely take them away).

I am working on scribbling up documents that I review, rather than making notes on a separate bit of paper. Auditors despair at the paucity of ticks in my files :-)

[helflaed.livejournal.com]

The kettle. Agh. I boil what I need and tip away any left over for safety reasons. Other half will overfill it, boiling water overflows over the worktop and a kettle nearly full of scalding water sits there afterwards. Then he complains that there isn't any water in the kettle after I've used it.