Mouse Rules
Three rules, and how to apply them when you're not the second mouse.
These rules were presented to me by an old flame. (Well, she wasn't old when she offered me the rules, and you can take that fact as an explanation of why the rules seem a bit fuzzy in places.)
1. Never look in a woman's purse ('cause you might find something you wish wasn't there).
2. When looking for the iodine, look first in the medicine cabinet.
3. In a fog always dim your lights.
I have never understood the first rule, at least, not fully. I get it that what's in a woman's purse -- or anyone's purse -- is their business, and unless you're invited in, you should, like the rule says, never intrude. It's the parenthetical part that bothers me. I can think of a lot of things I'd like as not find in a woman's purse ... if I looked in, which I wouldn't be doing, don't you see, if I obeyed the rule in the first place. If the woman were someone I loved I certainly wouldn't want to find a draft of a suicide note, or a recently postmarked love letter from someone who ain't me. And I wouldn't want to find a pregnancy test kit -- I mean, if she were young enough for the thing to be of personal value to her, and if I knew her well enough for such things to have emotional relevance for me. I'm sure there are many other things I wouldn't want to find in a woman's purse, but as you see, that's not the reason I would take the rule seriously. Some rules ought to be obeyed without regard for the effect -- good or bad -- they might have on you if you broke them. (I think that makes sense, but I'm not sure.)
By one way of thinking, I understand the second rule as the sort of advice Mr. Spock might give to Captain Kirk. Think and act logically. When I heard the rule I was nowhere near creative enough to see it any other way, but now that I am a fully grown Mouse, old and wise, it occurs to me that people who are "looking for the iodine" have some sort of wound that needs treatment, and given the rule's commonsensible simplicity, it may imply that the "first" place to look, while logical, is not necessarily going to heal the wound. It's not "iodine" per se that the stricken man is looking for; it's healing. But then, as I said earlier, the person who gave me the rules was no older or wiser than I was when she gavce them to me, so maybe she meant it the easy way. "Think about it, Frankie. This makes no sense." And right she was. Still ... there's the wound to deal with.
And that's where the third rule comes in handy. Odds are, the iodine is in the medicine cabinet, and even though the chances are not quite so certain that iodine will do the trick, it's almost a certainty that if you run around in a fog with your head full of glaring lights, you're not only not going to heal your old wounds, you're going to add to them. But there's still a niggling of doubt here. Looking at these rules, or any rules as guides to living life, it's fairly clear that the person who follows rules is going to go around never taking chances and, consequently, never finding anything that's not there in plain sight that any self-respecting robot couldn't find.
At about the same time these rules were being laid on me, I was also learning a different sort of lesson from a different sort of person, a dead woman, old and wise. She was an educator, and one of the "rules" she had embraced -- she may even have invented it -- was that "education is not about getting ready for life; education is life." Those are probably not her exact words, but I don't think they've lost much in the paraphrase. We live best when we live as learning people. We live best if, when looking for the iodine, we look in a woman's purse, even though we may find there something we wish had not been there. And because we're always being educated, and thus are never quite educated, we're constantly in something of a fog. But then, so is everyone else, and when the bright lights go on, and more than one of us begins to see the truth of the fog and the frightfulness of the things we might run into by taking a look where we're not supposed to look, maybe, just maybe, if we exchange a few knowing glances, recognizing each other's wounds, maybe, just maybe we'll all open our purses to the world, empty them onto the floor and let the stuff fall where it will. Then maybe, sorting it all out in the fog, we'll find the real iodine.
But even if we don't, who cares a rat's ass? Life's for living and living's for learning. All that stuff to rummage through ... boy! bound to be a lot of learnin' goin' on in that foggy, foggy medicine cabinet.
These rules were presented to me by an old flame. (Well, she wasn't old when she offered me the rules, and you can take that fact as an explanation of why the rules seem a bit fuzzy in places.)
1. Never look in a woman's purse ('cause you might find something you wish wasn't there).
2. When looking for the iodine, look first in the medicine cabinet.
3. In a fog always dim your lights.
I have never understood the first rule, at least, not fully. I get it that what's in a woman's purse -- or anyone's purse -- is their business, and unless you're invited in, you should, like the rule says, never intrude. It's the parenthetical part that bothers me. I can think of a lot of things I'd like as not find in a woman's purse ... if I looked in, which I wouldn't be doing, don't you see, if I obeyed the rule in the first place. If the woman were someone I loved I certainly wouldn't want to find a draft of a suicide note, or a recently postmarked love letter from someone who ain't me. And I wouldn't want to find a pregnancy test kit -- I mean, if she were young enough for the thing to be of personal value to her, and if I knew her well enough for such things to have emotional relevance for me. I'm sure there are many other things I wouldn't want to find in a woman's purse, but as you see, that's not the reason I would take the rule seriously. Some rules ought to be obeyed without regard for the effect -- good or bad -- they might have on you if you broke them. (I think that makes sense, but I'm not sure.)
By one way of thinking, I understand the second rule as the sort of advice Mr. Spock might give to Captain Kirk. Think and act logically. When I heard the rule I was nowhere near creative enough to see it any other way, but now that I am a fully grown Mouse, old and wise, it occurs to me that people who are "looking for the iodine" have some sort of wound that needs treatment, and given the rule's commonsensible simplicity, it may imply that the "first" place to look, while logical, is not necessarily going to heal the wound. It's not "iodine" per se that the stricken man is looking for; it's healing. But then, as I said earlier, the person who gave me the rules was no older or wiser than I was when she gavce them to me, so maybe she meant it the easy way. "Think about it, Frankie. This makes no sense." And right she was. Still ... there's the wound to deal with.
And that's where the third rule comes in handy. Odds are, the iodine is in the medicine cabinet, and even though the chances are not quite so certain that iodine will do the trick, it's almost a certainty that if you run around in a fog with your head full of glaring lights, you're not only not going to heal your old wounds, you're going to add to them. But there's still a niggling of doubt here. Looking at these rules, or any rules as guides to living life, it's fairly clear that the person who follows rules is going to go around never taking chances and, consequently, never finding anything that's not there in plain sight that any self-respecting robot couldn't find.
At about the same time these rules were being laid on me, I was also learning a different sort of lesson from a different sort of person, a dead woman, old and wise. She was an educator, and one of the "rules" she had embraced -- she may even have invented it -- was that "education is not about getting ready for life; education is life." Those are probably not her exact words, but I don't think they've lost much in the paraphrase. We live best when we live as learning people. We live best if, when looking for the iodine, we look in a woman's purse, even though we may find there something we wish had not been there. And because we're always being educated, and thus are never quite educated, we're constantly in something of a fog. But then, so is everyone else, and when the bright lights go on, and more than one of us begins to see the truth of the fog and the frightfulness of the things we might run into by taking a look where we're not supposed to look, maybe, just maybe, if we exchange a few knowing glances, recognizing each other's wounds, maybe, just maybe we'll all open our purses to the world, empty them onto the floor and let the stuff fall where it will. Then maybe, sorting it all out in the fog, we'll find the real iodine.
But even if we don't, who cares a rat's ass? Life's for living and living's for learning. All that stuff to rummage through ... boy! bound to be a lot of learnin' goin' on in that foggy, foggy medicine cabinet.
posted by Benedict S. at 9:34 AM
5 Comments:
Er,ah mouse,one might also find something desirable in a womans purse,if I loved the lady,and mind you I would obey the rule too but in case I did look I might find a love letter to me,a package of condoms,am I allowed to say that? I also might find a piece of paper with hearts and my name scribbled all over it.
IF the wound is an old one iodine will not help,but soothing gentle words may have an affect. All depending upon what kind of wound we are talking about..You are right again though,looking through a foggy medicine cabinate would be a learning lesson.
I don't think the rules say anything about a foggy medicine cabinet.
Rules, schmools, Miss Finding. Rules are a launching pads for the imagination.
If rules are a launching pad for the imagination, that's a new one on me. Rules are meant to stifle imagination and control behavior. Rules are finite; the imagination is infinite. They are not compatible. They are not complementary.
When you get right down to it, rules suck. However, my rules don't.
Good points, Miss FF, but without the stifling world created by "the rules," the imagination might never feel obliged to take flight. In a world without rules the imagination would probably spend its energies on the making of rules.
I offer the three given to me as evidence. They came up in a halcyon time, in a place where, if there were rules, they were -- between some people -- left unsaid. The imagination could have been content to fly around in the good air of that world, but instead...?
Well, those rules were only small talk anyhow, "persiflage" as it were. They were the sorts of flights essayed by innocents who had yet to feel the hard edges of the real rules. Had they but known the functionings of the rule-bound world ... perhaps they would have better spent their time than dallying with the make-believe.
But who's to say? Maybe the times served only to make fodder for the manufacture of nostalgia.
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