I'm probably the only one here whose mother would say, when I looked messy...

Comb your hair! You look like an ad for the Save the Children Federation!


And if she thought we were getting 'above ourselves,' she'd say.

What do you think you are, Mrs. Astor's plush horse?

That would have been insulting and unkind, but fortunately we had no idea what she was talking about.


One Sunday we heard the Bible verse, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." A few days later somebody offered her seconds at lunchtime and she replied, "Sufficient unto the day is the liver sausage thereof."

Nobody else's mother said things like that. I was so proud of her.