“You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.”….{attributed to Walt Disney}
Are you wise?
I mean , have you any words of wisdom or have you gleaned any advice to impart to help your fellow travellers through the jungles of life’s trials? Wisdom…the wisdom of Solomon?…Anything?
After a life’s struggle myself, the only things of advice I can think of are …Never eat the yellow snow…..and never , ever put milk into your favourite beer glass .You’ll never get a good head on that pint of ale again, if you do.. You can wash it with Fairy liquid washing liquid or shove it through the dishwasher but it’ll never be the same again…Utter disaster.
Other than that , the only words of wisdom I could impart to my first-married daughter and my new son-in-law was to describe my own personal Holy Trinity, which I did as part of a “humorous” speech I cobbled together with some trepidation, for their wedding day , some time ago. My Trinity has held me in good stead for as long as I can remember …since my rambling teenage years and early twenties…..and possibly for a longer time than that too.
Simply put, I proposed that life could be broken down into three eras .There were the Sudocrem Years , followed by the Germolene Era and finishing with the Vaseline, Twilight Days . My proposition was that an adequate store of all three medicants would be more than adequate to grease and smooth your way through most of life’s physical tribulations.Anything more cerebral or intellectual was much more than I could advise in a world of inconsistencies and spinning moral compasses. There was no true moral North Star in a world full of warring tribes, beliefs and unbeliefs, but there were adequate potions in the medicine cabinet to balm the physical body from the cradle to the grave.
Sudocrem for the nappy rash and later with Germolene for the grazed knee or the erupting teenage pock , insect bite or sting, Vaseline for that bruised and chapped lip or those chafed runner’s thighs or cyclist’s nethers. What better balm could any of us ever need.
Oh yes…and never be afraid of a bit of sentimentality .It might be the only buffer you have in facing a largely cynical world out there.
“Medicinal compounds” …as the old Scaffold song would have it “…most efficacious in every case”.
So what words of wisdom would you impart to your beloved family as death ebbed near or as your spawn leaves the nest to take on the world? A particular one which appears on Spike Milligan’s tombstone would be hard to argue with.It states very profoundly…”I told you I was ill” ….It’s in Gaelic as Spike reclaims his Irish roots….Spike the prophet, to be sure…but are these words of wisdom of any help to the rest of us or can anyone better them ?.
Harry, Sudocreme never visited your fiery cheeks, it wasn’t available till after the Beatles.
Ah…. but I used it on my three little baby girls ….back when they were wee innocent “cratures”
By the way dedeideoprofundis it has no “E” at the end . It was developed way back in the early 1930s but didn’t get the popular push until the 1960’s as you implied . i used it as a teenager. and carried it with me to college and so on …. and then of course the sprogs came along in the 1980’s….. wonderful stuff !!