How My Parents Raised a Sissy — by guest blogger Charles Martel
Bookworm on Jul 07 2009 at 8:12 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
This is the story of how my mother and father raised me to be a sissy.
In the 1950s when I was a grade-school kid, my father was a heavy equipment mechanic with lots of hair on his chest and a blue-collar fondness for spending much of his time out in the garage. I remember the time I walked out there and found him sewing a hole in one of his overalls. Until then, I has assumed that sewing was something only girls and women did.
“How come you’re sewing your overalls, Dad? Shouldn’t Mom be doing that?”
“Well, son, they’re my overalls so they’re my responsibility,” he answered. “Besides, I already know how to sew.”
“Where’d you learn that?” My voice indicated that I thought the person responsible for teaching him this skill should be boiled in oil for violating some basic law of nature.
“In the Army,” he said. “Everybody learned a little basic sewing so he could take care of himself out in the field.” My father paused, this former paratrooper who’d fought Hitler in North Africa, Sicily and Italy, and then said something that has stuck with me ever since. “The Army didn’t want a bunch of sissies running around out there. You know, men who can’t take care of themselves.”
I’d never heard the word sissy used this way before, to mean someone who lacked domestic skills, such as knowing how to sew. It was one more brick in a perspective that has become lifelong.
Along with my father’s matter-of-fact contribution to answering the question, “What Is a Man?,” my mother was working her own avant-garde action against the domesticity of the 1950s. Mom hated housework and never really believed that she was the Designated Drudge in our male-dominated family (father and three sons—I was the youngest). She insisted that each of us boys learn how to iron by the age of 7, then she put us in charge of our own clothes. “You want them ironed, iron them yourselves. If you don’t want to iron them, then wear them wrinkled. It’s your choice.”
Then she went a step further. Having rid herself of the dubious responsibility of ironing her able-bodied sons’ clothes, she made us an offer we didn’t often refuse: “If any of you want to make quick money, I will pay you 5 cents apiece for each shirt or skirt, and 10 cents for each pair of pants you iron that are not yours. If you don’t want to iron, fine. If you do, I’ll pay you on the spot.”
The thought of being able to pull a few shirts from the laundry basket and earn 30 or 50 cents for a few minutes’ work appealed to us. And because we all hated ironing, we learned to iron quickly and well. When we had nothing better to do or needed some quick cash, Mom’s offer was always sitting there, heaped high in a plastic laundry basket.
We also traded off washing dishes. Mom cleaned up after breakfast and lunch, but we three sons each washed the dinner dishes for a week, then took two weeks off.
We hated it, this 30- or 40-minute nightly interruption, punctuated by the teasing of the brothers whose turn it wasn’t. “Dee-shuzz! Dee-shuzz!” they’d taunt, buzzing around the condemned one’s head like manic wasps. Pleas to my mother to relieve us of our misery were met with mirth. “Is there a tattoo on my forehead that says, ‘She Who Does the Dishes?’ I don’t believe so.”
From Sunday night to Saturday night one of us would toil at the piles of dirty plates and crusty pans. We were told that short of a compound skull fracture or life-threatening illness, there was no way out of our obligation. So we bowed to the inevitable and each developed shortcuts for collecting, washing, rinsing and stacking dishes in the least possible time. Sentenced to wash, we each resolved to wash well and fast.
By the time each of us was 8, we had learned how to cook our own bacon-and-egg breakfast, make a simple lunch, iron shirts and pants, crudely patch a tear in our clothing with a needle and thread, and clean a dinner table in three minutes. These skills joined all the others we were learning, such as reading, writing, yard work and simple car maintenance, as the basis for later independence.
As we grew up, the three of us would compare notes about guys we knew in school who didn’t have a clue about such elementary things as fixing themselves a meal or how to press a shirt before a hot date. The gist of their complaints was that Mom or some other essential female had failed them by not being around to perform these tasks at crucial times.
Our questions as to whether they had ever thought of learning how to do these things for themselves were met with the same look of incomprehension one sees in the eyes of a cow. Then, after their synapses resumed firing, they’d ask, “What, and do sissy work?”
It dawned on us then that Mom and Dad’s definition of a sissy did not square with the rest of the world’s. And since our friends represented a far bigger portion of the world than my folks, perhaps they were right when they declared that my parents were raising their boys to be sissies.
After all, did we not fit the world’s definition of a sissy to a T? Sissy: A boy who can cook and clean for himself when his Mommy’s not around.
Email This Post To A Friend
11 Responses to “How My Parents Raised a Sissy — by guest blogger Charles Martel”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Enjoyable article, Charles!
My definition of sissy would have been: A guy who won’t go outside to get his mail because he’s wearing a wrinkled shirt (or because his hair isn’t combed). But I’m confusing it with prissy, or dilettante, I think.
My other thought: Parents are incredibly good at what I’ll call “parent-logic”, aren’t they? That’s a kind of logic that wouldn’t survive “Basic Greek Logic 101, circa 1000 B.C.” … but the kids don’t know any better until they get exposed to that basic logic, perhaps around the age of 19. When they’re out of the house!
Or when they *used* to be out of the house, in those halcyon days of old, when our culture declared it was shameful to live at home as an adult past the age of eighteen (or was it twenty-one).
Daddy taught me to sew – something I still struggle with – on a camping trip as a Boy Scout. Later he handed me his old Army sewing kit. I think I still have it somewhere. Mom expected us to clear the table after Dinner, and we kids all washed dishes – and put them in the dishwasher. We all emptied the dishwasher and put dishes away. Among my weekly chores was cleaning the bathroom I used.
We three kids learned how to cook for ourselves early on. We did it because it was an adventure at first, later to take the burden off Mom – she had a job.
I may be a very lazy middle-aged man, but I know how to do for myself. And Mom and Dad made sure of that.
Thanks, Charles, for the reminder!
Heh. I have four boys. I think they _can_ live up to your standards (well…three out of four, and the fourth eats fast food, isn’t married and doesn’t have a “significant other” but manages to look good.) but most of the time, they choose to take the traditional roles. I’ve been surprised at some of their choices. Both at what they choose to _do_ and what they choose _not_ to do.
The Cub Scouts started them right – in order to get their Wolf badge(age 8 years), they had to be able to cook a breakfast, and that included washing up afterwards. It wasn’t a huge step to go from cooking breakfast to making grilled cheese sandwiches, making spaghetti (from a package, at that point) and other snack type stuff. I never had junk food in the house. The budget was too limited – junk food (chips etc) were strictly for company…which also ensured that they were social for at least a short period of time – otherwise no chips and dips. So 8 became the marker age – when you’re 8, you start to make stuff on the stove…and that was the rule for my daughter as well.
Charles…did you know that knitting(socks, at least) and crocheting were originally activities of sailors? Also macrame. It makes sense, if you think about it – all three are functions of knots, and sailors of old knew knots. At least, that’s what I’ve been told…
Right, suek.
My very Ladylike GRANDMOTHER taught me to sew, and I recall no feelings that it was a sissy thing to do — just useful. It’s good not to have to explain ripped clothes to Mom.
In the 60s, when I was a teen, and worked as an orderly in a hospital, **I** knew how to make hospital corners, and the sissy GIRLS had to be taught. I also knew how to make a tight bed you could bounce a quarter off of, because my Mom told me I’d have to be able to do that when I went into the army. (Everybody in her generation went into the service). What could be less sissy to a boy — then — than knowing army stuff? My mom — also a Lady like her mom — also gave me the .22 – .410 rifle/shotgun she’d had as a girl. My friends didn’t see that as too sissy either.
When I grew up and had my own sailboat, I was disgusted by the common practice of the “butane backsplice,” in which a plumber’s torch is used to melt the ends of a nylon or dacron lines to keep them from unlaying, or fraying. Lubberly and NOT to be countenanced! No stranger to a needle and thread, I got a sailors palm and needle, and learned to do a proper job. And, mending sails is just plain sewing. Thanks Gramma!
Fine post, Charles. Your father defined sissy well. By ten I knew how to sew, cook, clean, iron, and very much take care of myself, thanks to a grandmother and great-grandmother (sewing, ironing). In fact, only my daughter and I iron in my household, my wife is not allowed to touch the iron. The Ariel moniker is a British motorcycle long go, so I am not a mermaid.
Suek, macrame is part of marlinspike seamanship (knots, splices, etc.) in that it was a way to practice the knots for repairing nets. It, however, originated in the making of rugs IIRC. The Coast Guard trained me in a bit of this, though long unused and thus long gone.
Bill Smith, a sailor to the bitter end I see.
Bookworm, you have a great blog. I lived in Mill Valley briefly, many years ago. I generally kept my mouth shut to get along.
Heh, heh, that was a good one, Ariel.
=)
I like your dad’s definition of sissy. Not being willing to, much less capable of, taking care of yourself is much more the mark of a timid man. Quite frankly, sissies need their mommy (in one form or another) to get by. Although, I had learned to sew, cook, wash dishes and clothes, I still found it odd that as a young man at Naval OCS I had a drawer with clear nail polish (sealing webbing), nail polish remover (dissolving quartermaster from brass), nylon hose (shoe buffing), an iron, and a sewing kit in it. Not to mention, learning to be concerned about my appearance at all times.
But apparently the world is past being self-sufficient now. I found this article about classes to teach kids how to fend for themselves at college disconcerting. Where were these kids’ parents when they were growing up?
1. A friend’s dishwasher broke. She spent all day trying to get a new one. “Don’t you have two kids?” I asked carefully. Her kids are 12 and 7. “It’s too much trouble” she told me. So she’d rather spend $600 that she really couldn’t spare than teach her kids to wash dishes? Why bother to have kids if you aren’t going to use them efficiently?
2. My uncle grew up in Prussia before WWII on a big farm. He learned to sew because they were a self-sufficient operation and they made all their own clothes. He made my aunt’s wedding dress, including embroidering a huge rose on the hem. It’s gorgeous. He is no sissy. He is also a cowboy, was a stunt man in the movies and was the fire chief at the Broadmoor Fire Station in Colorado Springs. Sewing is just one of his many talents.
[...] here’s a post from guest blogger Charles Martel at Bookworm Room about “old-school”…. Martel writes about how his parents worked together to teach him to do basic things for himself. [...]
When I was 8 my maternal grandfather died. My mother and my four year old brother left to spend a month with my bereaved grandmother. My father used the time to introduce my sister and me to a new fun thing to do: washing dishes. At the time, we thought it was fun. We did not enjoy having to continue the task when my mother and brother got back. But continue we did. And rightfully so.
In junior high, I taught myself to iron clothes. As my mother was bedridden at the time, the choice was simple. If I wanted my clothes ironed, I was the only one who would do it.
These days with perma-press and with different standards, I iron maybe five minutes every six months.
Cleaning the house was a team effort, from an early age.
My mother considered me a spaz and refused to teach me how to use the sewing machine. Before I went overseas to work, my aunt gave me a simple sewing kit, which I learned how to use when I needed to.
In third grade, I started walking two miles to school when I got up before anyone else was awake and prepared myself a dish of cold cereal. Because my mother was bedridden for some years, my father did a lot of the cooking, so I never saw cooking as an exclusively feminine task. My father’s “throw something in the skillet and see what happens” approach to cooking is my approach. By 13 or 14 I could bake cookies from scratch.
I first mowed the lawn when I was 10- that time just a portion. The next year I assumed complete duties. As the lawn was big and hilly, it took five hours to mow.
At age 8 I assumed responsibility for feeding the dog.
At 18 I painted the house- a big old farmhouse. Scraping and preparation included.
My father was a pretty good amateur carpenter. I regret that he died before I learned many of his skills. My father waited for me to ask. But my father refused to learn anything from HIS father, also a good carpenter, until my father bought a house. Oh well. Learn the skills when you need them.
My parents had a good-sized garden, including a permanent rhubarb and asparagus patch, but never required us children to work in it. Maybe I occasionally helped lay down mulch, or helped pick some crops, but that was most likely a case of my volunteering to do it, as I have no unpleasant memories of doing so. They definitely did not require us to weed. They saw the garden as their thing.
Some friends of ours had a strawberry patch of note. It was not big enough for commercial exploitation, but rather as an example of getting a lot of yield out of a small patch of land. Rumor has it that a US Secretary of Agriculture once visited it. The owner of the strawberry patch required his children to weed the patch. I remember one of the children in her FIFTIES informing me of how much she hated weeding that patch. Her having a bad relationship with her father may have had a bearing on her opinion of weeding the patch, but that’s another matter.
There is something sexy about sissies – they are men, who are so comfortable with their gender that they can reach out and above the rather pedestrian use of the definition.
Circumstances in life sometimes creates the need.
My paternal grandfather was a tailor, so my brother and I never for a moment thought it anything ’sissy-like’ at all. I was the real benefactor of his skills, since he created one of kind pinafores for me. My paternal grandmother, fell ill with scarlet fever after my dad was born and was either in a hospital bed or in bed at home for more than a year, which meant that my grandfather now had a dual role, which continued for many years.
One of the fondest and funniest memories I have of my dad is cooking his version of some awful fish and potato soup dish, expecting the rest of us to dive in and eat every last drop with relish (no doubt learned from his dad). We applauded his efforts but ‘allowed’ him to eat the entire over-sized pot. My brother picked up where my father left off and when not working (he’s a teacher) performs culinary miracles in the kitchen.
Finally, one of the most intriguing ‘dates’ was with a gentleman, who was a pilot by day and by night…he donned a chef’s cap and apron for me and proceeded to make me a Cesar Salad from scratch, made all the more appealing when he wheeled a serving cart in front me while I sat comfortably on his sofa. This was followed by a sumptuous meal. I was only permitted to sit, dine and enjoy.
p.s. Charles, I employed the nickel and dime technique to whacking flies, bees and creepy crawly things that found their way indoors. There were months when the boys made out like a bandit.