Life's Minor Collisions

by Frances Lester Warner; Gertrude Chandler Warner

For this reason, in any home that aspires to peace at any price, the telephone should be installed in a sound-proof box-office with no glass in the door. There is nothing that so incenses a friendly nature as a family grouped in the middle-distance offering advice when a telephone conversation is going on. The person at the receiver looks so idle; there seems to be no reason why he should not listen with his unoccupied ear; and, when he is so evidently in need of correct data, it seems only kind to help him out. It is the most natural thing in the world to listen. The family listens, in the first place, to find out which one of them is wanted, and they continue to listen to find out what is said. When the wrong thing is said, all loyal relatives feel responsible.

The person telephoning is unfairly handicapped by necessary politeness, because he can be heard through the transmitter and his advisers cannot. Only extreme exasperation can unleash his tongue, as happened once when Geoffrey, in our father's absence, undertook to answer a telephone call while Barbara, in the next room, corrected his mistakes.

Geoffrey, pricking both ears, was doing very well, until the lady at the other end of the line asked a question at the exact moment when Barbara offered a new thought. “What did you say?” inquired Geoffrey. Both Barbara and the lady repeated. “What is it?” said Geoffrey, waving one foot at Barbara. Barbara, not seeing the foot, repeated, and so did the lady, this time more distinctly. “I beg your pardon,” said Geoffrey anxiously, “but what did you say?” Like an incredible nightmare the thing happened again. “Shut up!” roared Geoffrey; “what did you say?”

Barbara, recognizing instantly that part of the message directed to her, wrote her suggestion on the telephone pad and stole prudently away. Minor friction, she had learned, can sometimes lead to action on a large scale. Only after some such experience as this do we allow a kinsman to conduct his own telephone conversations, taking his own responsibilities, running his own dark risks.

But the sense of mutual responsibility is, after all, the prime educational factor in family life. Every good parent has a feeling of accountability for the acts of his children. He may believe in self-determination for the small States about him, but after all he holds a mandate. The delightful interweaving of parental suggestion with the original tendencies of the various children is the delicate thing that makes each family individual. It is also the delicate thing that makes parenthood a nervous occupation. When parental suggestion is going to interweave delightfully as planned, and when it is not going to interweave at all, is something not foretold in the prophets.

The question of parental influence becomes more complex as the family grows older and more informally organized. Sometimes a son or daughter wants to carry out a pet project without any advice or warning or help from anybody. There is nothing rash or guilty about his plan. He simply happens to be in the mood to act, not in committee, but of himself. To achieve this, surrounded by a united and conversational family, becomes a game of skill. To dodge advice, he avoids the most innocent questions. At such times as these, the wisest parents wonder what they have done to forfeit confidence. They see this favorite son of theirs executing the most harmless plans with all the secrecy of the young poisoning princes of the Renaissance.

When this happens, the over-sensitive parent grieves, the dictatorial parent rails, but the philosophical parent picks up whatever interesting morsels he can on the side, and cocks a weather eye.

“Robert seems to have a good many engagements,” wrote the mother of a popular son in a letter to an absent daughter, “but whether the nature of the engagements is social, athletic, or philanthropic, we can only infer from the equipment with which he sets out. I inferred the first this morning when he asked me to have his dress-suit sent to be pressed; but I could not be certain until Mrs. Stone said casually that Robert was to be a guest at Mrs. Gardiner's dinner next week. Don't you love to see such tender intimacy between mother and son?”

Secrecy of this kind is not the monopoly of sons. Excellent young women have chopped ice and frozen sherbet behind closed doors because they did not want to be told again not to get the ice all over the back piazza. Certain warnings go with certain projects as inevitably as rubbers with the rain. The practised mother has so often found the warnings necessary, that the mere sight of the act produces the formula by rote. Model sons and daughters should accept these hints with gratitude, thus avoiding all friction, however minor. But rather than be advised to do that which they were planning to do already, the most loyal of daughters will resort to clandestine measures, and go stealthily with the ice-pick as with a poniard beneath a cloak. This annoys an affectionate and capable mother very much. And she has a right to be annoyed, has she not? After all, it is her ice-pick.

There is something of spirited affection about the memory of all these early broils. They were heated enough at the time, for the most violent emotions can fly out at a trifling cause. Remarks made in these turbulent moments are often taken as a revelation of your true and inward self. The sentiments that you express in your moment of wrath sound like something that you have been repressing for years and are now turning loose upon an enlightened world. There is an air of desperate sincerity about your remarks that makes your hearers feel that here, at last, they have the truth.