THE NARRATIVE ARC
My Mother’s Bad Advice Taught Me to Think For Myself
Wash your hair with mayonnaise was one of her beauty tips
“Put a bag of poop in your car,” my mother said. “That way, no one will want to steal it.”
“But if there’s poop in the car, I’m not going to want to drive it,” I said.
“You take the poop out when you’re in the car,” she said, exasperated that I wasn’t getting the brilliance of her idea.
Luckily, I was well beyond the point where I seriously considered my mother’s recommendation.
I’d like to say that her cat shit anti-theft device was my mother’s most inane piece of advice, but she had so many terrible suggestions that it’s impossible to pinpoint the worst.
Was it when she suggested I break into show business by doing an act based on the life of the Incomparable Hildegarde even though I’d never heard of this chanteuse or could sing a note?
Or what about when she strongly recommended I find myself a room in a ladies-only boarding house — the kind that died out in the 1940s?
Her suggestions were so unsuitable and odd that they were laughable.
