Having come across a handful of old snapshots from my childhood, I was tossed back into the 1940’s and memories of some of the social customs of those days. My mother was not particularly intent on teaching us all the social graces and rituals, but we picked up a lot of supposed social “rules” from friends, movies and watching other adults in our lives.
I remembered the term “trade-last” and began to wonder if today’s young people have such silly rituals. If you’re over sixty, you may remember “bread and butter.” If two friends walking together were forced to separate in order to go around some person, puddle or other obstacle, they were well-advised to say “bread and butter” at once when they came back together. I’ve no idea what dreaded thing might befall them if they failed to do so, but we never took the chance of finding out.
“Step on a crack, break your mother’s back.” Many a nice day, that dreaded possibility kept our eyes glued to the sidewalk on the way home from school. Or we could achieve a wicked sense of revenge by deliberately stepping on cracks should we be feeling rebellious or upset with our mothers. Most days, though, Norma Jo and I strolled happily along without ever giving a thought to cracked sidewalks. I was never sure if that superstition referred to only accidental cracks, or if it included the built-in cracks between the slabs. I do remember sometimes feeling guilty about stepping on those cracks and a sense of relief when I got home to find my mother unimpaired.
Norma Jo also introduced me to mayonnaise sandwiches. I still enjoy that odd treat and never fail to think of her when I take the first bite. I guess the best thing about Norma Jo was that she was an only child and enjoyed considerably more privileges than I did. Her mother allowed us to play in the house and didn’t seem to mind when we messed around in her kitchen, slathering mayonnaise on slabs of plain white bread, or played with the jewelry and make-up at her dressing table.
On my way home from Norma Jo’s house, I often saw Mrs. Little sweeping her front lawn. There was not a blade of grass to be seen, only smooth, bare dirt. She and her husband raised beautiful beds of flowers and a large vegetable garden. I never did figure out what they had against grass. Mrs. Little’s rigorous sweeping must have consumed as much energy as pushing a lawn mower. On second thought – mowing might have been Mr. Little’s job and the sweeping might have been his idea.
Male and female roles were more clearly defined in those days, and there were striking differences in the behavior expected of the two sexes. This went as far as dictates about what women should wear for specific occasions. There were even rules about how to dress for doing housework, shopping for groceries, exercising, traveling, and many other occasions. One of the silliest was in regard to the wearing of gloves. No woman was properly dressed for just about any social activity if she neglected to cover her hands with a pair of gloves. Even as late as the 1950’s “little white gloves” were considered essential for such occasions as afternoon visiting and formal teas. This caused some debate over the proper way to eat those little tea sandwiches – with or without gloves? with the fingers or with knife and fork? It all seems so silly in retrospect, and I much later discovered that the reason for the gloves was related to the fact that many women who had no household help were ashamed of their red, rough hands (the result of hours of hard work doing the laundry, dish-washing and floor scrubbing that they did to care for their families.) They should have been proud rather than ashamed.
If you are too young to have heard of it, “trade-last” is the practice of passing on a compliment that you heard about a friend, in exchange for one they heard about you. It wasn’t unheard of to make up something in order to find out what someone had said about you. Silly girlhood rituals, but were they so different from some of the little social rituals and niceties that we observe as adults today?
Afterthought; Is there any good reason for the necessity of men wearing neckties?