After reading my last post, about never having a suitable retort at the right time, Mum sent me a message in which was a story about my Dad. Although in lots of ways I have been told I am a chip off the old block, never in a million years could I hope to come up with something as brilliant as this.
My parents spent many happy holidays touring the British Isles, but Dad hated staying more than a couple of nights anywhere because of having to make polite conversation with other hotel guests where the inevitable question would come up:
“What do you do for a living?”
Apparently Dad’s stock reply was:
“I mind my own business.”
This of course can be taken one of two ways and used to embarrass Mum no end. Nowadays she thinks it was quite a clever response, and I tend to agree with her.
Dad, standing outside the shop where he minded his own business
The photo above was taken in 1993 when I took Son to visit Grandpa’s shop.
Pearl Cross Ltd was in the heart of London’s west end, just off Charing Cross Road.
Dad commuted there, by driving himself from his North Downs village, until he was seventy-eight.
I wrote about the shop in a blog post which you can read here:
I love that, Jenny! LOL…my mother would be embarrassed as well. Thanks for sharing the lovely photo.
I thought it was too good a story to miss. The photo is one of my favourites.
Now I get it. So THAT’s where Yankees (in the northeast part of U.S.) get their stranger-shyness from; THAT’s why they call them New Englanders.
When I moved to a small village in New England it took 7 years before people in the bank, bookstore, coffee shop, began to act as if they had seen me once or twice before, a year after that, they seemed to know my name and stopped calling my “that new lady in town.”
Essentially it’s like that here. My parents moved to their village when I was eighteen months old and my Mum still lives there. It definitely took years before we were accepted as a true village family.
Oddly, Dad was one of the most sociable people you could ever meet – the life and soul of any party, and of course he met many, many people through his work. It was just that one question which used to get his goat.
Must be where I get it from!
This is so great, Jenny. Three cheers for your dad…and a smile and a hug for your mother!
I shall pass that on with pleasure 🙂
This is great Jenny, your dad sounds like such a wonderful character! I am now going to read about his shop 🙂
He was definitely a character – always able to find the funny in things and infuriating at times – and actually, very sociable when it suited him!
A very clever response. There is a corresponding problem to other’s asking “what do you do, or what did you do” as if once retired you don’t do anything anymore. Is the sense of lost identity that some people feel when retiring. So much of their identity had been tied up in their work life. We also have that problem with being so-and-so’s: husband, wife, mother, father, son daughter.
As son as we get old enough to know that we are a separate person from others we feel the need to categorize and label others. Part of it is a safety issue – is this other a safe or dangerous person.
But as we mature we really need to stop judging and sorting and learn to experience and appreciate.
I’m definitely doing a lot of appreciating, Rod. Thanks for your thoughtful comments.
“Minded my own business” that got a smile. I like that answer actually! 🙂
Me too!
Mind my own business, I love it! I need to get that on my business card “gav young, minding his own business”
I loved that too. I read that blog of yours and got to that part when riding with my husband, back from South Carolina. He laughed too.
Maybe I should copyright it! It would make a great business slogan!