One of the stories of the Buddha has it that when confronted by an angry, rude man who hurled insults at him, Buddha only smiled. His followers asked him why he did not reply, and he reportedly said If someone offers you a gift, and you refuse to accept it, to whom does the gift belong? and the right answer of course is “the person who brought the gift”.
From Restoration of Chaos and Order by punk band Against All Authority
As the story goes, I guess Nana was being herself and was squabbling with Papaw. I guess he told her to shut the fuck up or he was going to duct tape her mouth shut. True to her nature, Nana kept flapping her gums. And true to his word, my Papaw grabbed his cane, hobbled to the hot water closet in the hall (that was where he kept all the household tools) and grabbed a roll of duct tape. Nana, unawares, and probably patting herself on the back for getting him pissed off, never seen it coming. He taped her whole head; around the mouth, around the head. TAPED. HER. WHOLE. HEAD!!!!!! I guess he left her some holes to breathe through, but the rest was SOLID silver. I have no idea how she got out of it, and I seem to recall that Papaw had a visit from Lubbock’s finest.
I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for that one. I think anyone who knew my grandmother, God rest her soul, would have had pom-poms and been cheering my Papaw on.
When I ran across the graphic above it instantly made me think of that story.
In 1910 the Girl Guides were established in the United Kingdom by Robert Baden-Powell. (A friend has pointed out that in fact they organized themselves as girl scouts the year before Baden-Powell attempted to tame them as guides. A point worthy of noting…)
